For the greater part of the last three decades, the shortest overland connection between China and Europe passed through Russia. The Northern Corridor, operating within the Eurasian Land Bridge route over Russian and Belarusian territories, accounted for over 86 percent of overland cargo transportation between China and Europe as late as 2021. It was more affordable, well-developed, and dependable than other similar routes. However, when Russia declared war on Ukraine, sanctions rendered the Russian railway connection too costly and undesirable for European companies, and the Hormuz Strait blockade made the maritime connection impossible at once. In such circumstances, the previously hypothetical Middle Corridor, stretching over the territory of Kazakhstan across the Caspian Sea to Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey, became the only feasible option available. Beijing, which had been preparing for such a turn of events for several years already, hurried to invest in its development.

These numbers speak for themselves. Freight volumes on the Trans-Caspian route increased fivefold within only seven years, from 800,000 tons annually to 4.5 million tons, with an impressive year-on-year growth rate of 63% recorded in 2024 in terms of Caspian ferry crossings amounting to 4.1 million tons of cargo, according to data from the Ministry of Transport of Kazakhstan. In addition, containerized transit increased 37% to 63,300 TEUs during the first ten months of 2025. Transit time has been reduced from 28 to 32 days to 13 to 17 days through investments into infrastructure development. The World Bank estimates that the volume of transit will triple from the current level to 11 million tons annually by 2030, while the number of containers transported will grow to 300,000 TEUs per year by 2029. In particular, transit through this route could capture up to 1% share of China-EU trade.

As revealed by Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service recently, China is currently making plans to boost cargo transportation to Europe using the Middle Corridor. This move comes at the........

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