Brussels is spending billions to route Asian trade around Russia and a war-torn Iran. Much of the cargo still takes the Russian road anyway.
Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev landed in Brussels on June 23, met Ursula von der Leyen and António Costa, and watched the European Commission launch its Connectivity Agenda Platform. Jozef Síkela, the commissioner for international partnerships, called the Trans-Caspian route (or Middle Corridor) a “vital bridge between Europe and Asia”. Apostolos Tzitzikostas, who holds the transport brief, said stronger links mattered for European competitiveness. Marta Kos, the enlargement commissioner, told the ministers the aim was to make Europe’s supply lines more secure. The platform arrived with letters of intent from development banks worth up to two billion euros.
The Development Bank of Kazakhstan signed the cheques the same day, financing worth close to one billion US dollars, one tranche with the European Investment Bank and another with a syndicate of Commerzbank, JPMorgan Chase and Standard Chartered backed by the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency. A day earlier Kazakh and European partners had signed four agreements worth 462 million US dollars. Tokayev told a Kazakhstan-EU roundtable that his government had spent more than 35 billion US dollars on transport and logistics over 15 years, and that annual cargo on the corridor had risen fivefold since 2019, from 0.8 to 4.1 million tonnes. He put the target at 10 million.
Waqar Ahmad, who heads Nazarbayev University in Astana, said the corridor had drawn “massive momentum” after the Strait of Hormuz crisis. America and Israel have struck Iran throughout much of 2026, closing the Gulf to jittery shippers and pushing those who had already quit the Red Sea to look overland. Turkey’s transport minister, Abdulkadir Uraloğlu, had spent the spring touring Gulf capitals to sell Türkiye as the corridor’s western terminus. The enquiries reaching Astana and Baku were of a kind the route had rarely fielded before.
KTZ Express, the freight arm of Kazakhstan’s national railway, ordered six vessels for the Caspian in May, four from Jiangsu Haizhongzhou Shipping Industry in China and two from the Baku Shipyard, each able to carry up to 537 containers. The order followed China Railway’s move in August 2025 to buy into Middle Corridor Multimodal (MCM), the venture that Azerbaijani, Kazakh and Georgian rail operators had set up in 2023 to run the line.
Weak links
Nevertheless, Friedrich Conradi, of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, warned in April that the corridor could prove a “dead end“, with Georgia its only gateway to Europe. The Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway, the western spine, was already running at its limit; traffic on it had jumped 35 per cent in a single week in 2025, backing trains up at the border. The Georgian government continues to prevaricate over a promised deep-water port at Anaklia.
Rovshan Rustamov, chairman of Azerbaijan Railways (ADY), spent the spring courting customers, meeting the managers of Interrail Holding and METRANS at Transport Logistic China in June. His adviser, Emil Mammadov, said the priority for 2026 was “efficient, predictable eastbound delivery“, a nod to the containers that trundle back east half-empty after unloading in Europe. ADY had joined its Kazakh and Georgian counterparts in adding rolling stock and vessels through MCM.
Woldemar Walter, of the German Economic Team, has reported that freight forwarders will pay a premium for the corridor only when the service runs to time, which it often does not. Rates swing with demand and there is no published tariff to plan against. A 40-foot container cost 3,500 to 4,500 US dollars through the middle route in 2025, against 2,800 to 3,200 US dollars through Russia. DHL tells shippers to allow 50 to 60 days when queues build at the crossings.
On the northern line through Russia, the trains keep running. RailFreight.com reported on June 11 that container traffic between China and Europe through Russia had grown by roughly half in 2025, and was still climbing. For how much longer, given that Ukraine has been hitting Russian oil refineries with increasing frequency and accuracy in recent weeks, is anyone’s guess. The Middle Corridor’s moment is unquestionably now, but it does yet look capable of making the most of the opportunity.
Photo: Dreamstime.