Vladimir Putin trying to drum up enthusiasm from some slightly depressed-looking regional governors in Astrakhan Oblast.
If Astrakhan sounds like an out-of-the way place, then look at a map of the Caspian Sea area.
But developing inland waterway transport infrastructure and logistics is always going to involve cooperation amongst regions, and even internationally, so the economic and political structures for allowing planning of such long-term cooperative developments is crucial. Indeed, the whole Chinese belt and road initiative needs this infrastructure, but the Chinese government seems to be trying to do it without the planning!
Update, May 31st: See Uzbekistan Back on the Silk Road and EurAsEC in Kazakhstan
If Astrakhan sounds like an out-of-the way place, then look at a map of the Caspian Sea area.
But what Google maps doesn't show very well are rivers, probably because they are not considered economically important. But the Volga is the biggest river in Europe with a catchment area of 1,350,000 square kilometres, and this includes the Ока́ river "the largest right tributary of the Volga. It flows through the regions of Oryol, Tula, Kaluga, Moscow, Ryazan, Vladimir and Nizhny Novgorod and is navigable over a large part of its total length, as far upstream as to the town of Kaluga. Its length exceeds 1,500 kilometres (930 mi). The Russian capital Moscow sits on one of the Oka's tributaries — the Moskva River."
But developing inland waterway transport infrastructure and logistics is always going to involve cooperation amongst regions, and even internationally, so the economic and political structures for allowing planning of such long-term cooperative developments is crucial. Indeed, the whole Chinese belt and road initiative needs this infrastructure, but the Chinese government seems to be trying to do it without the planning!
Update, May 31st: See Uzbekistan Back on the Silk Road and EurAsEC in Kazakhstan
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