Andrey Areshev

On June 29, 2022, the sixth Caspian Summit was held in Ashgabat with the participation of the leaders of the Caspian littoral countries – Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Iran and Russia. According to official information, the meeting touched upon a wide range of issues – from ensuring peace, stability and security in the Caspian Sea, securing its status as an inland body of water without the presence of military contingents and non-regional players (primarily NATO countries) in its waters, trade and economic cooperation, transport cooperation to environmental issues, tourism and humanitarian dialog

Some features of the preparation of the event did not pass by attentive observers. As the Telegram channel “Caspian Khoja Nasreddin” notes, the first information about the upcoming meeting in the capital of Turkmenistan “appeared just a week before it was held,” while earlier preparations for such meetings lasted for months, especially in the process of agreeing on the Convention on International Cooperation signed in 2018 during the previous meeting in Aktau.the legal status of the Caspian Sea.

Such a tight deadline for the preparation of the sixth Caspian high-level forum was most likely due to the need for additional “reconciliation of hours” and discussion of prospects for multilateral cooperation in the new geopolitical realities after February 24. The visit to Tajikistan and Turkmenistan is the first foreign trip of the President of the Russian Federation after the start of a special operation on the territory of the former Ukrainian SSR. It can be assumed that in an environment of increasing turbulence and growing risks of military escalation on the western borders, it was important for the Russian side to receive confirmation from its neighbors in the region of their commitment to the previously signed documents on security issues in the Caspian Sea, and not only to formally follow them. By increasing the sanctions pressure on Moscow and adhering to a hard line on the “Iranian issue”, Washington and Brussels are actively courting Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, showing increased interest in “alternative” Russian energy suppliers and their transportation routes.

The signing of the “contract of the century” back in 1994 with the further strengthening of the regional positions of Western transnational structures, the launch of the Baku–Tbilisi–Ceyhan and Baku–Tbilisi–Erzurum pipelines meant a qualitatively different role for Turkey as a transit of oil and gas from the eastern shores of the Caspian Sea towards Southern Europe. At about the same time, it became known about the development by a group of American analysts led by Professor Daniel Fine of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology of a conceptual plan “Storm over the Caspian Sea”, providing for a “peacekeeping” military presence of the United States and NATO in the region in the areas of export pipelines.

It seems that the absence of intelligible references to this program in recent years does not mean at all that it has been scrapped, but, for example, has not been adapted to changing realities, placing a clearer emphasis on the role of the lured part of local elites and non-state players. On the eve of the Ashgabat summit, Baku hosted the first meeting of the foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan, Turkey and Kazakhstan in such a format, discussing, in particular, the prospects for the functioning of the “middle” (Trans–Caspian) international transport corridor “East-West”. It is quite possible that under the pretext of “ensuring the security” of certain communication facilities, militants of the so-called “private military campaigns” may infiltrate the region.

The difficult and sluggish negotiation process on the division of certain sectors of the Caspian Sea in the 1990s– 2000s eventually allowed to create prerequisites for a more effective functioning of the already five-sided format, which made it possible to reach broader agreements. At the same time, the sharply increased level of military escalation in Eastern Europe may result in a loud “echo” in the regions considered by Western strategists as “secondary fronts” along the perimeter of the Russian borders.

Despite the obstruction from the West, mutually beneficial cooperation will continue. This is important both for ensuring collective security and for the implementation of cross–border transport projects, such as North-South, designed to connect the Russian coast of the Caspian Sea with the Indian subcontinent by the shortest route. And it is quite logical that, speaking at the open part of the forum, Vladimir Putin noted the growing regional trade and investment ties, “the deepening of mutually beneficial industrial and high-tech cooperation … The volume of Russian trade with the Caspian countries is constantly growing. Thus, in 2021, the trade turnover increased by more than a third, by 35%, and amounted to $ 34 billion. In January-April of this year, it added another 12.5%.”

The leaders of other Caspian littoral countries confirmed the relevance and inviolability of the Convention adopted at the previous summit in Aktau, confirming sovereign rights in relation to the sea and its resources. President of Turkmenistan Serdar Berdimuhamedov focused on security issues in the region, stating the need to “neutralize potential threats that could hinder or slow down the progress of the countries of the region,” which in Ashgabat is understood as “terrorism, drug trafficking, organized crime, any other illegal activity.”

Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev drew attention to the alarming dynamics of the shallowing of the Caspian Sea: “Experts from coastal countries will continue to work in terms of creating expert groups to identify the causes of such an environmental disaster and identify measures to prevent further shallowing of the Caspian Sea.” Baku is interested in expanding cooperation in solving the environmental problems of the region, to some extent generated, as we wrote earlier, by the large-scale hydraulic engineering projects of the Turkish allies in the upper reaches of the Kura and Araks. On July 5, Absheron will host an international conference on the Caspian Sea, and at the end of the year – the sixth conference of the parties to the Framework Convention for the Protection of its Marine Environment.

In turn, Kazakh leader Kassym-Jomart Tokayev called for the early entry into force of the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea, which has not yet been ratified in the Iranian Majlis (Tehran refers to the unresolved issues of such important issues as “designation of marine zones” and “demarcation of basins and sub-basins”). Responding to the increasingly acute food problem, Tokayev suggested that the Caspian neighbors form a food hub necessary “to strengthen trade cooperation between our states.”

And there is still a lot to be done on this path. First of all, as Vladimir Putin noted, “… we are talking about building an international North–South transport corridor, a large-scale project of a transport artery stretching more than seven thousand kilometers from St. Petersburg to the ports of Iran and India.” Moscow has consistently advocated deepening the partnership relations of the Caspian Five in all possible directions. The key to the well-being of the region will be strict adherence to the principles laid down in the 2018 Convention. Focusing particularly on the development of regional tourism, the Russian leader suggested thinking about launching thematic cruises designed to promote closer mutual cultural enrichment and humanitarian cooperation.

The communique adopted at the end of the meeting, among the principles of the activities of coastal States, refers to the non-presence of armed forces in the Caspian Sea that do not belong to coastal States, as well as the non-provision “by any coastal State of its territory to other States for aggression and other military actions against any of the coastal States.”

The next, seventh meeting of the leaders of the Caspian littoral states will be held in Iran (where, hopefully, the aforementioned Convention will finally be ratified), and the Caspian Economic Summit is scheduled to be held in Russia next autumn. As Stanislav Pritchin, senior researcher at IMEMO RAS, notes, the participants of the “five” are interested in working out formats of interaction that allow diversifying the obvious risks that arise when interacting with Western countries and do not allow using the potential of cooperation to the full. Hopefully, this interest will manifest itself in specific projects in the near future.