The silent battle over the Middle Corridor

Source: Bne

Is Russia, leaning on Georgia, quietly blocking the development of the Middle Corridor?

Despite the hype over the expanding China-Europe cargo transit route that avoids Russia, it still only handles freight amounting to around approximately 6% of the annual capacity of the Northern (Russian) Corridor.

Those developing the Middle Corridor, sometimes referred to as the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), clearly need to step up their efforts. But they are coming up against a stubborn corridor bottleneck that, for reasons that are none too clear, they are finding hard to budge.

The Middle Corridor is around 4,000 kilometres (2,485 miles) in length. A multimodal transport network, it links western China to Eastern Europe via Central Asia, the Caspian Sea, the South Caucasus, the Black Sea and Turkey. Importantly, it cuts an in-between path that entirely avoids sanctioned and war-impacted Russia and Iran.

All along the route, work on raising transit capacities is taking place at a fair clip. But it is when the corridor reaches Georgia (and it must reach Georgia for, as things stand, there is no permitted route through Azerbaijani and Armenian territory to Turkey – but we’ll get to that later) that anxieties set in for those working on building key Middle Corridor infrastructure.

As described by Friedrich Conradi, in a commentary for Carnegie Politika, Georgia is simultaneously still the route’s sole gateway to Europe and a country that is aware that its existing Black Sea port capacity is nearing exhaustion.

That being the case, at this point, the observer might express some bewilderment at the fate of a project to build Georgia a deep-sea port, Anaklia. As outlined by Conradi, the Georgian government has slashed the project’s 2026 funding from 150 million lari ($56mn) to 50mn lari.

Writes Conradi: “The planned deep-sea port, designed to handle vessels that Georgia’s other ports cannot accommodate, has been identified by the World Bank and the EU’s Trans-European Transport Network plan as a central corridor priority – yet Tbilisi seems uninterested in building it. The government has also shown little willingness to meaningfully expand the ports of Poti or Batumi.

“In Georgia, explanations for this change of course vary widely, ranging from the government realizing that while demand might exceed the capacity of Poti and Batumi, it is far from sufficient to justify a project of Anaklia’s magnitude, to Russia putting pressure on Tbilisi to try to prevent the Middle Corridor from permanently replacing traffic on its own Northern Route.”

Conradi also considers another possible explanation for the Anaklia conundrum, namely China’s limited interest in completing the port.

He reflects: “After the original Anaklia construction project, led by a consortium including Western firms, was canceled in 2020, the Georgian government selected the Chinese-Singaporean (and U.S.-sanctioned) CCCC as its preferred contractor. By all appearances, it was a done deal. Yet as of March 2026, the Georgian transport department was maintaining that the decision had not yet been made.

“Chinese disinterest, if confirmed, would cast further doubt on the corridor’s near-term prospects.”

And, concludes Conradi: “Whether the obstacle is insufficient demand, Chinese disinterest, or Russian geopolitical pressure, the implications for the Middle Corridor are the same: its most critical piece of infrastructure in Anaklia remains stalled.”

The facts on the ground being what they are, it is no surprise that parties pinning big hopes on the Middle Corridor are attempting to work around Georgia.

One of those parties is the US, which, with an eye on the massive volumes of critical minerals in Central Asia that it would like to see shipped to America to help break China’s stranglehold on resources such as rare metals and earths, has moved to establish the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity, or TRIPP.

With TRIPP in place, freight could transit along an alternative corridor segment that would run from the Azerbaijani border, across a narrow strip of southern Armenia and through the Azerbaijani exclave of Nakhchivan to the Turkish border.

But hold your horses. Grab a map and you’ll quickly take on board that just a little more than 40 kilometres (27 miles) from the planned TRIPP route in Armenia lies a potentially intractable difficulty: Iran.

As the Iran war has shown, Tehran is not shy of destroying regional infrastructure it sees as tied to Western powers. In other words, unless there is a sustainable peace between the US and Israelis and Iran, Middle Corridor enthusiasts may have to kiss the proposed TRIPP solution goodbye.

If the much-touted Middle Corridor proves a dud, if its expansion prospects founder in the murky politics of the South Caucasus and the unpredictable consequences of the Trump-Netanyahu determination to bring Iran to heel, the impact could be profound.

Billions of dollars are being spent on building new transit capacities on Middle Corridor segments either side of the South Caucasian trio of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia.

Only two weeks ago, looking to address roadblocks, the World Bank and partners committed $3.3bn, with $1.9bn earmarked for Turkey's Istanbul North Rail Crossing to boost rail cargo transit across the Bosporus strait, and $1.4bn approved for the reconstruction of Kazakhstan's Karagandy-Zhezkazgan highway.

On the day the funds were announced, Turkish Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz, speaking during a visit to Kazakh capital Astana, said: "The Northern Corridor [through Russia] has become unpredictable due to geopolitical tensions. The southern route is pushing the limits of its capacity.

"This situation has made the Middle Corridor not an alternative but a mandatory choice."