BRICS IS GATHERING ITS STRENGTH.

Or why, at a time when individual players in the world market for transport services are running into new challenges and breaks in transport connectivity, the constructive BRICS agenda keeps adding new solutions to strengthen the transport connectivity of the Eurasian and the global economy 

According to Marat Zembatov, Director, Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, Institute of State and Municipal Management, Higher School of Economics; Member, Russian-Omani Business Council, Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation; Expert, BRICS Business Council Group on Transport and Infrastructure; Ph.D. in Economics:

“The declaration of the BRICS transport ministers, adopted in Nagpur on 11–12 July 2026, came at a moment when the risks to transport connectivity had moved to the top of the news agenda. There is probably no place left in the world where people are not discussing the crisis in the Persian Gulf, the disruption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and the blockade of the Bab el-Mandeb. That is why the central formula of the ministerial declaration—the need to keep supply chains and transport routes ‘safe, cost-effective and resilient’—sounds like a mantra from a recent, yet already distant, safe past. And how strong the BRICS countries’ motivation turns out to be in preserving the constructive impulse inside the grouping (today there is a certain tension in the Gulf region between at least three of its members) will determine whether the provisions of the declaration can be put into practice in the very near future. And it is not only the BRICS countries that need this to happen. The whole of the world economy needs it, since its normal functioning depends in large part on the transport connectivity that the BRICS countries provide.

That need is nowhere more visible than around the two maritime gateways of the Middle East—the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb. The Hormuz crisis has held the world’s attention for almost five months now, while the situation with shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb flared up again in the past week alone. In effect the normal transport function of both maritime arteries has been disrupted, and that disrupts the regular passage of roughly 1.24 billion tons a year (on average over the past two years). According to international observers, only 11 vessels carrying bulk commodities passed through the Bab el-Mandeb on 26 July—the lowest number in several months. Fewer than ten such vessels a day were transiting the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend, against an average of 120–140 a day before the crisis.

The conflict in the Gulf has moved onto a trajectory of globalization. The events of the past few days point to this unmistakably. The Ukrainian drone attack on an Iranian civilian vessel in the Caspian Sea and the exchange of damaging strikes between Saudi Arabia and Yemen mark the conflict’s escape from the Gulf into the open ground of an escalation no longer held in check by geography.

The threats to shipping affect two interconnected corridors. Hormuz, which used to carry commercial cargo out of the Persian Gulf—mainly oil and LNG, of course, along with sulfur and helium—and around which the principal export terminals of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Iraq and Iran are concentrated, once accounted for up to 20% of world hydrocarbon supply; today it is not working normally. The Bab el-Mandeb, which connects the Indian Ocean with the Red Sea and the Suez Canal and served as the fallback outlet for Gulf oil, dropped out of global transport logistics soon afterward. Rerouting Saudi crude from the Persian Gulf to Red Sea terminals through the East–West pipeline to the port of Yanbu—roughly 6–7 million barrels a day, or about 249 million tons a year—had been reducing dependence on Hormuz. But the latest Houthi attacks in the Red Sea have already forced Saudi Aramco to increase supply from the Mediterranean port of Sidi Kerir, which receives crude through Egypt’s SUMED pipeline (the northbound leg of the route from Yanbu into Egypt across the Red Sea). And after the strikes on the refinery at Jazan and on the Red Sea ports of Yanbu and Jeddah, it is hard to say when the situation will return to what it was before the conflict.

Against this background the Nagpur Declaration reads as a program for moving from dependence on a handful of narrow passages to a distributed system of transport resilience. The document contains a broadly worded rejection of restrictive measures that impede access to port capacity. The BRICS transport ministers call for strengthening the resilience of ports, modernizing infrastructure and introducing up-to-date equipment. The principal substantive element of the declaration is the BRICS Framework for Logistics and Supply Chain Cooperation. Its starting premise is that world trade today is developing amid broken chains, shifting routes and volatile freight rates. The answer to these challenges is to be flexible, diversified and dependable networks capable of sustaining the cross-border movement of goods whenever logistics bottlenecks appear.

Given that BRICS brings together countries accounting for roughly 40% of world GDP and almost 26% of world merchandise trade, the scale of the grouping allows it to build mechanisms of its own for meeting the challenges to transport connectivity. To that end the framework provides for identifying gaps in supply chains, sharing information between carriers and developing international shipping cooperation. A separate task is to strengthen local production of heavy transport equipment, spare parts for it and critical components. The proposal is to set up assembly plants and strategic re-export hubs. This is an important shift in transport logic, one that points to a search for ways of overcoming the negative consequences of decoupling—the severing of established trade and transport ties within the familiar pattern of the international division of labor. Greater autonomy of supply chains, aimed at securing a country’s own repair base, equipment and components so that a port, a terminal or a railway can keep working when the usual deliveries stop, is now expected to guarantee that logistics services remain resilient and regular.

The declaration sees the rail network as the most important pillar of transport connectivity. It formally establishes the BRICS Railway Research Network, whose intended lines of work are technology exchange, joint research and training for the rail industry. For a transport system dependent on Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb, the development of overland lines acquires particular value. The International North–South Transport Corridor, the rail links between Russia and China, the trans-Iranian routes and the approaches to the ports of the Gulf of Oman cannot, of course, fully replace the maritime routes of global trade that are dropping out. But they create additional options for moving freight and reduce the global consequences of local ruptures, providing fallback logistics routes and safeguarding supply chains.

An important feature of the Nagpur Declaration is the creation of permanent mechanisms for transferring knowledge. Technical seminars and training programs are planned. Compendiums of practice and pilot projects are provided for. The BRICS Urban Mobility Hub is to bring together government bodies, transport operators, universities, private companies and technology start-ups. From this point on, the chairship of each successive BRICS member country is expected to hold at least one event in this field.

The limitation of the document lies in its voluntary and legally non-binding character. The framework creates no shared financial obligations. It contains no list of urgent infrastructure projects, no common budget and no quantitative targets for reducing logistics risks. The real outcome will depend on the appearance of specific routes, compatible documentation, back-up ports and financing mechanisms—all of which are to come from the voluntary application of constructive effort by the states party to the declaration.

What matters greatly here is a disposition to work together constructively on giving substance to a shared image of the future. And the most visible and effective expression of readiness for such work is joint projects in education—because education is by definition an investment in the future. A clear example is the BRICS Transport Academy, a project that is being carried through successfully. In 2025–2026 it developed as an applied international educational program of Russian Railways, linked to the work of the BRICS Business Council Group on Infrastructure, Transport and Logistics. The Academy works mainly through international online masterclasses, the exchange of industry knowledge, the preparation of internships for sharing experience, and educational programs for young people.

Since the Academy was launched, 15 masterclasses have been held, drawing more than 3,000 participants. Preparations have begun for professional exchanges for young specialists with India and the UAE. With Brazil, the discussion covers training railway specialists at Russian transport universities, online classes run by the Academy and visiting programs based at the University of Brasília. And the main result of the project has been the move from an experimental series of webinars to the formation of an international network of professional training.

The declaration of the BRICS transport ministers, with its call to ensure the safe and regular operation of supply chains in the interests of the global economy, the creation of fallback overland routes to hedge the risk of breaks in transport connectivity, and the creation of the BRICS Transport Academy all fit the paradigm of a constructive agenda for the image of the future—the agenda that representatives of the countries of the global majority are working on: Russia, China, India, Brazil and the other BRICS member states. And if it is still not obvious to some what BRICS actually does, it is precisely the grouping’s transport agenda that gives a clear answer to that question. On the threshold of a new world economic order in which there will no longer be room for the dominance of anyone’s subjective unipolar role, BRICS is gathering its strength.”