Astrakhan ‘Port’ Now a Bottleneck as Far as Trade with Iran is Concerned, Moscow Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 5 – Russia’s trade with Iran via the Caspian faces many obstacles including the silting up of the sea and the reduction in the size of ships and the weight of the cargo they carry that has led to, but none of these problems rivals the bottleneck that Astrakhan now represents, Moscow experts say.

            In newly published research, they argue that it is not appropriate to call Astrakhan a port as such. Instead, that term is used to describe wharves spread along more than 100 km of the Volga river and its delta, transshipment points that in many cases are not directly served by railroads (ng.ru/economics/2026-10-05/1_9596_port.html).

            That has multiplied the difficulties in intermodal transfers, a problem that has affected all Russian ports on the Caspian, including Astrakhan if one can call it that, Olya and Makachkala but has been obscured in recent months by increases in trade via all three as the result of the use of ever more workers to shift even bulk cargo, let alone finished goods.

            Moscow needs to develop a real port in Astrakhan, something that will be enormously expensive given that it will require not only the construction of new rail lines to the existing wharves but also concentrating wharves and building ships that have shallower drafts so that they can use them.

            Moscow’s ability to build such ships quickly is limited by problems with its yards and the absence of funds for such efforts and by the Russian government’s proclivity to build bigger ships at a time when the declining water levels in the lower Volga and the Caspian mean that smaller ships are the only ones that will be able to function.

            As a result, trade between Russia and Iran via the Caspian is likely to slow and then even stop in the relatively near future, and both countries, although saddled by Western sanctions have few choices, are likely to look again at rail transit through countries to the east and west of the sea if they are to achieve the trade volumes officials in both have been talking about.