Page 68 - bne monthly magazine June 2024 Russian Despair Index

68 I Eurasia bne June 2024
In the event, the crowd was lacklustre and listened to the speeches by the leaders of Georgian Dream without enthusiasm, according to reports from members of the crowd. There were virtually no EU flags amongst the pro-government crowd, which carried Georgian flags and the blue banners of the Georgian Dream party.
Key slogans chanted sporadically
by the crowd included: “Language, Fatherland, Faith! Long live Georgia! Long live Bidzina!”
Meanwhile, President Salome Zurabishvili criticised the ruling party's actions as a "real Putin move" in Tbilisi. She illustrated her post with a video showing thousands of buses transporting people to Tbilisi for the ruling party's rally.
She highlighted the 15-day-long spon- taneous protests against the "Russian foreign agents bill" and advocated for a European future for Georgia.
During the ruling party's rally, thousands of students gathered in another part of the city, on Chavchavadze Avenue, in
an anti-government protest against the foreign agents bill.
New India-Europe transit corridor set to challenge IMEC, Suez routes
bne IntelliNews
The battle of the corridors is heating up as India promotes
a new India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) route that will connect the subcontinent with Europe by traversing the Middle East over land then sea to the EU via Haifa in Israel. An alternative has sprung up that avoids the increasingly unstable Levant and travels to Europe from India via Iraq and Turkey. And a third route of sanctioned countries will connect St Petersburg in Russia via the Middle East to India.
Geopolitical tensions and are high. Houthis are terrorising the Red Sea, which carries 40% of global seaborne traffic and a war in the South China Sea between China and the US is looming. The sea routes connecting east and
west have not looked so insecure for centuries. Land routes that connect Asia and Europe are suddenly at a premium.
China has already established rail links between the two as part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), but since Russia went rouge and invaded Ukraine, even those routes have become problematic.
The Caucuses have been promoting the Middle Corridor that dips below the Caspian Sea, avoids Russia completely and claim could halve transit times.
At the same time, Russia is promoting
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its Northern Sea Route (NSR) over the top of the country, now that global warming is clearing the ice packs
out of the way and also promises to significantly shorten the time for sending goods from Europe to Asia by several weeks. While security fears dog most other sea routes, only Russia has the nuclear-powered icebreakers need to traverse this route.
IMEC
India is proposing IMEC, which traverses the Middle East and avoids the Caspian and Black Sea completely. The 4,800-km-long IMEC will consist of a railway, ship-to-rail networks and other transport routes.
It will be divided into two parts: the East Corridor, which will connect the Arabian Gulf to India, and the Northern Corridor, connecting the Gulf to Europe.
The original IMEC plan was a deal signed at the last G20 summit between India and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and formalised with a memorandum
of understanding (MoU) in September 2023. Indian goods were to be collected at the port of Mumbai and shipped
to Jebel Ali in the UAE, before being transported across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) by train to Israel, where they will be sent by ship from Haifa on their last leg to the European ports of Piraeus in Greece, Marseille in France and Messina in Italy, to enter the EU.
“It will be the most direct connection
to date between India, the Arabian
Gulf and Europe: with a rail link that will make trade between India and Europe 40% faster; with an electricity cable and a clean hydrogen pipeline
to foster clean energy trade between Asia, the Middle East and Europe; with a high-speed data cable to link some of the most innovative digital ecosystems in the world and create business opportunities all along the way,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said at a related transport event in September.
“The EU is also keen to see the route established, because if it significantly increases its trade with India via the route it will also give it new leverage in the Middle East, where currently it has limited influence.”