Omsk Social Chamber Leader Seeks to Revive Siberian River Diversion Project as ‘Next BAM’ and as a Geopolitical Weapon for Moscow

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 15 – Over the last year, both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan officials have called on Russia to divert Siberian river water to them so that they can save their agriculture and populations. As in the past, Moscow has rejected those calls because of the harm they would do to Russians east of the Urals.

            But now a Russian official, Anatoly Solovyev, chairman of the environmental committee of the Social Chamber in Omsk Oblast, has taken up the cudgels for restarting a project most Russians have long rejected; and he has done so by using arguments that recent developments make less unpalatable (vpoanalytics.com/2022/06/16/reki-sibiri-ne-dayut-pokoya-kazahstanu-i-uzbekistanu/).

            He argues that Siberian river diversion could become as important to the economic development of the region as was BAM, that it could ensure the continued geopolitical influence of Russia in Central Asia, and that its construction makes sense now that Russia has been driven out of Europe and is turning to Asia.

            There are no signs that he has gained much of a following in the Russian Federation either in Siberia or in Moscow, but his words are an indication that the whole idea of sending water from Siberia to Central Asia has not died and that it may have more supporters within Russia at least regionally than anyone had thought.

            But most importantly, Solovyev’s argument shows the economic desperation of many Russians east of the Urals. He and presumably some others are now prepared to sacrifice their region’s ecological well being because they see no other possibility of attracting resources from Moscow to stem their region’s economic decline.