Russia is stitching together a web of new railway corridors that reach from the South Caucasus to the Indian Ocean, redirecting freight away from Europe and towards Asia and the Global South as it makes a pivot to the east.

More than 93% of Russian Railways' (RZD) international traffic already runs to what Moscow calls “friendly countries”, chief executive Oleg Belozerov told President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on July 31, while rail freight with Finland has fallen by a quarter and with Estonia by 42%. Traffic with China rose 5.5% and with Belarus 3%.

The scattered projects add up to more than a set of unrelated schemes, according to a survey published on August 12 by the analytical platform Russia's Pivot to Asia. As IntelliNews reported, geography counts in geopolitics. Proximity matters and to capitalise on it physical transport links play a key role.

Moscow is trying to turn its continental geography into an economic advantage, using rail to route trade around the maritime chokepoints — the Bosphorus, Suez and above all the Strait of Hormuz — that war and sanctions have made unreliable.

“We see prospects for the further development and extension of the International North-South Transport Corridor to Africa,” RZD first deputy chief executive Sergei Pavlov told the State Duma, sketching feasibility work in Burkina Faso, Ghana and South Africa. “We are prepared to actively get involved in this work.”

But building rail connections is a long and expensive process. The individual links, from the Caucasus to the Java Sea, sit at very different stages. Here is where each of them stands.

The southern network

International North-South Transport Corridor (INSTC): The spine of the whole strategy. The Russia-Azerbaijan-Iran route is moving from declarations to operations. The three countries' railway chiefs met in Moscow on July 3-4 and signed a pact to digitise the corridor and standardise electronic customs data. Freight through the Astara crossing on the Iranian border hit 47,500 tonnes in June, up 50% y/y; southbound shipments rose 27% in 1H26 and Russian grain exports to Iran ran at more than four times the year-earlier level. The Azerbaijani section runs 511 km, and Baku says the corridor can cut Persian Gulf-to-northern Europe transit from 45-60 days by sea to 20-25 days, with the three governments aiming at 15mn tonnes, or about 660,000 TEU, a year. The route is not shockproof: it was knocked offline earlier this year when the bombing of Iran halted southbound traffic.

Rasht-Astara railway: The single biggest gap in the western branch. Some 162 km of Iranian track between Rasht and the Azerbaijani border is missing, and until it is built cargo must be trucked across the break. Iran and Russia have signed an intergovernmental financing deal for the line and set 2030 as the completion target. Moscow now frames it not as a leap of faith but as capacity added to a trade flow that is already growing, with grain moving south in volume.

The Gulf states: Russia is widening the southern mouth of the corridor. The transport ministry said on August 11 it had signed memorandums with Iran, Bahrain and Oman and was preparing more with Qatar, Saudi Arabia and others. Saudi Arabia already runs more than 5,500 km of track through Saudi Arabia Railways, including a 2,750 km North-South line, and plans to push the network past 8,000 km. With the Strait of Hormuz exposed as a weak link, the Gulf monarchies want overland alternatives, and Oman has asked to join the INSTC and reach on towards East Africa.

Russia-Pakistan freight rail: The most striking new move. Russia's ambassador to Islamabad, Albert Khorev, confirmed on August 8 that the two sides are finalising the first direct freight services, Moscow-Faisalabad and Moscow-Karachi, with Belarus possibly joining, a plan since confirmed by RailFreight. Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin argued on August 6 that Russia should build its own railway access to the Indian Ocean to guard against instability around the Bosphorus and Hormuz. The route has been tested via Iran but was curtailed by recent security trouble there.

India: The prize at the end of the southern network. Trade in energy, fertilisers and machinery is already strong, and the INSTC promises 20-25 days in transit against roughly 40 by sea. The Siberian town of Berezovsky is building a RUB2bn ($25mn) logistics hub, run by container operator AlEnSi, aimed squarely at the Indian consumer, and New Delhi is expected to sign a free trade deal with the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). Russian freight operator FESCO has already opened an India-linked container service to East Africa, a sign of how far the logistics chains now stretch.

Afghanistan: The hardest link, and potentially the most valuable. Four cross-border lines already run in the north, and the proposed Trans-Afghan railway would let Russia move up to 15mn tonnes of transit freight a year towards Pakistan's ports. Uzbekistan, which has already opened direct rail freight through the country to Afghanistan, is the driving force, but security, financing and multi-government coordination keep the route stuck as a dream more than a plan. The Taliban's economy minister, Abdul Rahman Habibaliban, said on August 12 that Kabul would guarantee the line's safety.

The eastern and northern links

Russia-China rail: The highest-volume relationship, where most of the track already exists and the job is adding capacity. Passenger services between Zabaikalsk and Manzhouli resumed in March after nearly six years, but freight matters more. China and Russia are planning a fifth border crossing: Heilongjiang province has tendered a feasibility study for a rail bridge over the Amur linking Heihe with Blagoveshchensk, to sit alongside the crossings at Manzhouli, Suifenhe, Tongjiang and Hunchun. RailFreight puts the price near €1.3bn. An existing road bridge, opened in 2022, is already close to capacity.

BAM and the Trans-Siberian: The eastern backbone that carries all this to the Pacific. RZD is pushing capacity on its Eastern Operating Domain towards 180mn tonnes, moving grain, fertilisers and containers as coal volumes wobble. Russian banks agreed last year to pour trillions of roubles into the Baikal-Amur Mainline and Trans-Siberian, the long-running effort to clear the bottleneck that throttles exports to China.

Mongolia: A single-track weak point running near capacity. Russia and Mongolia are modernising the cross-border Ulaanbaatar Railway joint venture, aiming to lift freight capacity to 50mn tonnes a year by 2030 through parallel tracks and longer trains. Mongolia has signed a free trade deal with the EEU, letting it ship commodities north at minimal tariff while earning transit fees between Russia and China.

North Korea: Russia's shortest border, a 17-km strip along the Tumen River. The Khasan-Tumangang link uses dual-gauge track and carries the world's longest through passenger service, Moscow to Pyongyang. The two sides are rebuilding the crossing and adding a road bridge, due to open in late 2026 or early 2027, chasing Pyongyang's mineral wealth, put at $6-10 trillion, including anthracite, iron ore and rare minerals.

Central Asia and the Caucasus

Kazakhstan: The eastern branch of the corridor and the busiest partner. Under a strategic partnership signed in Astana in November 2024, KTZ and RZD agreed to lift throughput at their junctions by 30%, from 65 to 85 train pairs a day, and to modernise nine border crossings. Kazakhstan already ships coal and grain north through Russia by rail, and the eastern North-South branch through the country to Iran has an annual capacity of 10mn tonnes.

Tajikistan: A rolling-stock market rather than a corridor. Dushanbe is buying Russian freight, passenger and specialised railcars, some through leasing, as bilateral trade reached about $2.6bn in 2025, up 17.3%, with 97% of settlements in national currencies. For Russian manufacturers, kitting out a national railway is a longer-lived business than selling a single wagon.

Armenia: A concession that doubles as geopolitics. RZD runs the South Caucasus Railway under a long-term deal and has offered to help restore lines around Yeraskh and towards Gyumri. As Yerevan and Baku mark the first year of their Washington peace deal, new connections towards Azerbaijan and Turkey could pull the network into a wider regional transit role.

Belarus: Already fused with the Russian system and now the northern starting point for southern routes. Minsk could join the Russia-Pakistan freight plan, and on August 3 it despatched a second train under its Slavic Caravan project, carrying more than 4,000 tonnes through Russia and Kazakhstan to Central Asian markets.

Technology and legacy markets

Thailand: A different model, exporting know-how rather than hardware. On August 5, Thai officials met Russian railway researchers in Moscow and agreed a memorandum on technology, training and digital systems, along with plans for domestic railway-wheel production and exchanges with 19 Russian transport colleges. Bangkok and Moscow also signed a broader letter of intent covering rail, aviation and smart-transport systems.

Indonesia: The largest greenfield opportunity. Transport minister Dudi Purwagandhi said on August 6 that Jakarta was in talks with Russian and Chinese investors over a Kalimantan rail network, part of a push that also covers Sumatra and Sulawesi. Russia and China have both expressed interest in the Trans-Kalimantan line. Across an archipelago of 17,380 islands with little interconnected rail, Russia could help build networks from scratch. Indonesia has an EEU free trade deal and is a BRICS member.

Serbia: Russia's one surviving European foothold. RZD is finishing the Unified Dispatch Center near Belgrade, a €127mn project that was about 83% complete in 2026 and uses automation and artificial intelligence to manage traffic. It handles some 540 km of track today, with a target of 3,357 km, building on the train-dispatching centre Belgrade and Moscow agreed to construct. The work shows how Russia's rail exports have shifted from track and locomotives towards digital control.

Cuba: A legacy fleet that keeps paying. About 70% of Cuba's locomotives and railcars are of Russian origin, and at an August transport summit in Moscow Havana asked for help modernising rolling stock and infrastructure. The installed base makes Russia the obvious partner for maintenance, spare parts and upgrades even where Western financing is closed off.

The money problem

All of this runs into a hard constraint: cash. RZD posted 2025 revenue up 10.4% at RUB3.64 trillion ($44bn) and operating profit up 19.1% at RUB544.6bn ($6.6bn), but net profit collapsed from RUB50.7bn to RUB2.3bn as financing costs jumped, leaving net debt at 3.37 times EBITDA against a 3.5 ceiling. The company has cut its investment programme by 20% in 2026 after a 40% cut the year before, down from a 2024 peak near RUB1.5 trillion ($18bn), even as it maintains 85,000 km of track across 77 of Russia's 89 regions.

That is why the corridors matter to the balance sheet as well as the map: they are meant to generate the freight that pays for the network. Grain is doing the heavy lifting, with loadings up 56.1% in the first half, and Moscow has floated a RUB10bn ($122mn) package to subsidise alternative rail routes for grain after Ukrainian attacks disrupted shipping through the Sea of Azov.

The links overlap by design, so that trade can be switched between them when a border, a strait or a government turns hostile. They are underpinned by a spreading net of trade deals — the free trade zones of the Commonwealth of Independent States and the EEU, EEU pacts already in force with Iran and others newly agreed with partners such as the UAE, plus multilateral efforts such as the Istanbul agreement to expand China-Europe rail transit and the North-South projects pushed at last year's CIS railway summit. Whether the web carries enough grain, metals, fertiliser and containers to pay for itself is the open question that will decide if Moscow's railway diplomacy becomes a self-sustaining trade system or a map of good intentions.