Conflicts over Water Intensify in Southern Russia, Threatening Moscow’s Plans for North-South Corridor

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 8 – Moscow, Kalmykia and Russian regions along the Volga are increasingly at odds over water, with no obvious solution that does not leave one or more of these aggrieved and spread anger to neighboring areas and thus threaten Moscow’s plans for a north-south corridor to Iran via the Caspian.

            Moscow is worried by the impact of global warming and the increasing use of water by the people and economies in regions adjoining the Volga-Don Canal that is leading to the siltification of its waters and those of the Caspian and thus limiting the ability of larger vessels to pass from central Russia southward to Iran and the Indian Ocean.

            Kalmykia, 93 percent of whose population doesn’t have access to potable water and whose agricultural areas are increasingly subject to desertification, wants a canal from the Volga to bring it more water even though that would reduce the Volga’s flow still further and it has also been pushing for a new trans-Caucasus canal from the Caspian to the Sea of Azov.

            And Russian regions in the Volga and Caspian watersheds which want to continue to take more water from these waters are alarmed by both Moscow’s focus on the Volga-Don Canal rather than the entire water space and Kalmykia’s desire to take even more water from that channel which feeds the Caspian.

            These conflicts are just some of “the problems and prospects” of Moscow’s plans for a north-south water corridor that Strategic Culture Foundation analyst Aleksey Chichkin surveys in his latest articles, problems that have the potential to delay or even kill that project (fondsk.ru/news/2026/02/08/vodnyy-marshrut-sever-yug-problemy-i-perspektivy.html).

            Not surprisingly, the Russian writer spends much of the article attacking Kalmykia’s plans for bringing water to that parched republic; but he does not address the ways in which the serious shortages of potable water there are likely to provoke widespread illness, emigration, and political anger in that Buddhist republic.

            Indeed, if Moscow continues its current course, it is likely to find that it will have provoked a new conflict in the North Caucasus of which Kalmykia is a part and may even further anger predominantly ethnic Russian regions adjoining the Volga and Caspian as well, thus triggering new conflicts and undermining its own plans.