The North-South international transport corridor as a tool of the russian federation's foreign policy

Abstract

Under sanctions pressure and the restructuring of global logistics chains, the International North—South Transport Corridor (INSTC) is being transformed from an infrastructure project into an independent instrument of the foreign policy of the Russian Federation. The relevance of the study stems from the need to assess how Russia uses the corridor to reorient its foreign economic ties towards the Global South and to form a sustainable Eurasian logistics architecture. The purpose of the article is to identify the place of the INSTC in the system of Russia's foreign policy priorities and to show how its national interests are realized along the three branches of the corridor — the western, the trans-Caspian and the eastern. The study is based on a qualitative analysis of the doctrinal documents of the Russian Federation (Foreign Policy Concept, National Security Strategy, Transport Strategy) and on current statistical data for 2024–2026. Institutional, comparative-political and structural-functional approaches are applied. It is established that the corridor's cargo flow reached 26.9 million tons in 2024, and that the construction of the Rasht—Astara railway is becoming the key link of the western branch. It is shown that Russian-Iranian and Russian-Indian cooperation acts as the load-bearing support of the corridor, while the main competitor remains the Trans-Caspian route (the "Middle Corridor"). It is concluded that the INSTC is becoming for Russia an instrument of a "sanctions-resistant" foreign policy and a system-forming element of Greater Eurasia.