Kazakhstan and Turkey: are connecting vessels reliable for Russian imports? –

/View.info/ The road that can be covered with thick fog

Since the second decade of March, Russian companies have sharply increased the number of requests for assistance in circumventing Western sanctions to the representatives of Kazakhstan. This happened after Turkey’s refusal to ensure the transit of sanctioned goods from the EU and the West in general to Russia.

Reuters writes about a number of excesses, citing seven official Turkish sources. According to them, in recent weeks, Russian business has literally “overwhelmed” Kazakh counterparties with proposals for joint work. We are talking about how to organize the supply of goods, especially sanctioned ones“from phones and bearings to aircraft parts and rare earths”.

A Kazakh businessman said he was offered $1 million to help transport just one truckload of “rare earth elements” from Australia. Some requests have been rejected based on the Kazakhs’ fear of falling under secondary sanctions, which Blinken, who recently visited Astana, most likely used to blackmail.

The problem really exists: Turkey, which has become the largest center for the Russian Federation to circumvent Western restrictions (according to the local Foundation for Economic Policy Research, Russians opened more than 1,300 companies here in 2022, which is a 670% increase , than in the previous year) and increased supplies to Russia have tripled in the past year, in early March it suspended or extended the execution of customs documents for almost all goods going to the Russian Federation. An unnamed government official told Bloomberg it was related to the sanctions.

According to Western and local media reports, on March 14, Turkish transit resumed operations, but customs expanded the list of transit and commodity restrictions, including goods that were included in the latest sanctions packages. In particular, we are talking about power generators, pumps, binoculars, radars, snowmobiles, computer parts, iPhones, trucks and many other goods.

And since the beginning of the year, the United States has banned the supply of electronics and household appliances worth more than $300 if more than 25% of American technology or components are used in the volume of the specific products.

According to Reuters “the transit boom through Kazakhstan seems to be just beginning” which, of course, does not go unnoticed in the West. The day before, the media was full of reports about some online system launched in Kazakhstan on April 1, designed to track all goods crossing the border of the republic: Astana is trying to demonstrate that the country, which is part of the EAEU, adheres to the restrictions imposed by the West.

„Our government has repeatedly and very clearly stated that Kazakhstan does not impose any sanctions or restrictions on trade with Russia. However, it will not allow circumvention of Western sanctions and will not become a platform for such circumvention. We understand all the risks associated with secondary sanctions, so we closely monitor our mutual trade with all partners’ a senior source told Eurasianet.org.

However, even without taking into account the possible difficulties, transportation through Kazakhstan (and in general through Central Asia) to Russia in terms of imported assortment was at least one and a half times more expensive than similar operations through Turkey. This is especially true for shipments from Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and “Pacific” France. Accordingly, the retail price of goods entering Russian territory through Central Asia is at least twice as high as compared to the “Turkish transit”.

If in 2021 Turkey occupied only the 11th place in the list of foreign trade partners of Russia, then only in the first 9 months of the year, starting from the beginning of the WTO, the trade doubled to 47 billion dollars, bringing Turkey from the 11th place to the 3rd ( after Belarus and China).

At the same time, no agreement of the Russian Federation on the transit of goods through Turkey, including on the Bosphorus – Sea of ​​Marmara – Dardanelles, does not contain a provision for the regulation of the relevant transport by the relevant authorities of the two countries or any common transport and transit structure.

We recall that in the Soviet-Turkish open-ended agreement “On direct railway communication” (1961), which specified the previous documents of 1923. and 1937, bilateral and transit traffic are regulated precisely by the mixed specialized commission.

This agreement effectively ceased to operate in the early 1980s and 1990s against the background of regional conflicts in the Caucasus, the termination of operation of the Transcaucasian railway line through Abkhazia and Georgia, the de facto Turkish blockade of Armenia announced in April 1993

Ankara’s support for separatist movements and terrorist groups in the North Caucasus; – Samur – Derbent to Russia) is episodic. After the launch of cross-border railway communication between Azerbaijan and Turkey, Moscow and Ankara should confirm the validity of this agreement, make appropriate changes to it, providing for the possibility of transit through the territory of the Caucasian states.

The regular operation of the trans-Black Sea ferry route from the port of Poti (Georgia) to the port of Kavkaz (RF) would contribute to the partial solution of the above problems. Although Yerevan announced the launch of the ferry as early as June 2022, there has been no progress so far. The ferry service has not operated since 2018, in part because the Dutch company that owns the line avoided an express permit for Russian-Georgian traffic after the sanctions.

The ownership of this ferry line by a Russian or a mixed Russian-Georgian-Armenian company would be strategically important, but any step in this direction would meet the stiff resistance of the destructive forces in Georgia and partly in Armenia.

Difficulties in Russian-Turkish relations could grow if the opposition “Alliance of Six” succeeds in the May 14 elections, as well as if there is a prolonged confrontation along the lines of the Kyiv “Maidan”. Meanwhile, Erdogan’s government is trying to make the most of the infamous “grain deal” that reaffirms Turkey’s dominant role in trade in the Black Sea, the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East.

On March 23, Erdogan announced an upcoming telephone conversation with the Russian president. According to the Turkish leader, he had earlier discussed with V. Putin the implementation of the “grain deal”, the possibility of processing Russian grain in Turkish mills and sending it to the poorest countries.

After Moscow pulled out of the Ukrainian grain deal, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan needed just two days to force Russia to return to the deal and abandon the idea of ​​blocking Ukrainian grain exports. The speed of these changes shows how much Ankara’s influence over Moscow has grown over the past eight months, sharply shifting the balance of relations in Turkey’s favor.says the Carnegie Center.

And if there is an element of exaggeration in this estimate, it is very little. The heirs of the High Gate make good use of their geography and lobbying skills. The growing dependence of the Russian Federation on foreign trade transit, as well as legal loopholes in the regulation of bilateral and transit traffic, forcibly camouflaged with informal agreements, increasingly turn Russian-Turkish cooperation into a “one-way street”. After May 14, dense fog may cover this road.

Translation: EU

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