Despite Moscow’s Spending, Freight Traffic on Russia’s Rivers and Even the Length of Navigable Sections of These Waterways have Fallen Dramatically since 2022, Accounting Chamber Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 2 – Moscow has spent 190 billion rubles since 2022 to eliminate bottlenecks in its Unified Deep-Water System in the European Portion of Russia; but instead of achieving anything, it has seen riverine freight there decline by 28 percent and the total length of navigable routes by 5600 km, according to the Accounting Chamber.

            The worst situation is to be found along the Volga-Caspian canal where the movement of export-import cargo has become “virtually paralyzed,” the Russian government’s auditing agency says, a key part of Russia’s north-south trade corridor (ng.ru/economics/2026-07-02/1_9529_cargo.html ).

            That suggests that Russia’s rivers and the country’s reliance on them for the movement of freight both within the country and between Russia and foreign states have become yet another casualty of Putin’s shift in spending and attention away from the rivers in order to be able to finance his expanded war in Ukraine. 

            The government is currently scrambling to try to overcome problems there, the chamber continues; but a harbinger of worse to come is that the authorities have removed from the UDWS list major portions of rivers, an indication that Moscow has effectively decided that it can’t dredge them enough anytime soon to make them navigable.

            Officials had reported earlier that as a result of the silting up of rivers and the reduction in water flows as a result of global warming and increased use by people along the course of the country’s rivers that the total length of navigable rivers within Russia had fallen to 50,000 km (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/04/russia-now-has-only-50000-km-of-fully.html).

            The Accounting Chamber study suggests that that figure must now be reduced still further, an indication that riverine freight transport will not meet Putin’s targets in the next few years at least and that some riverine routes and the industries and populations that rely on them are going to be sacrificed instead.

            For background on how serious this is and how Putin’s policies have failed to stop the decline of riverine traffic, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2026/02/following-protests-budget-cuts-and.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/04/russia-now-has-only-50000-km-of-fully.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/01/moscow-may-finally-be-about-to-confront.html.