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 St. Petersburg economic forum has roared to a close. Over June 3–6, it drew delegates from 142 countries into hundreds of sessions and produced 1,084 agreements worth 6.642 trillion rubles. Saudi Arabia took the stage as this year's guest of honor — and made the most of it, signing 30 agreements with Russia, with energy cooperation leading the way. Beyond energy, the conversations stretched to tourism, education, and transport.
The Saudi delegation was led by Minister of Energy Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman. Among the participants and speakers at the Saudi sessions were Minister of Industry and Mineral Resources Bandar bin Ibrahim Alkhorayef and Minister of Transport and Logistics Saleh bin Nasser Al-Jasser. Saudi Arabia's national pavilion covered roughly 400 square meters. The Russian-Saudi business dialogue centered on an engaged discussion of the investment, industrial, energy, and transport-and-logistics agenda.
The forum's transport-and-digital track included the session "The Digital Evolution of Transport: How Platforms Are Changing the Rules of the Game," which addressed platform-based solutions, the "single window" concept, electronic document management, and cost reduction across supply chains. The national digital transport-and-logistics platform "Lotos" was discussed separately.
Russian Railways signed additional agreements with operators to improve the efficiency of freight railcar fleet utilization. Sixty-eight operators have already joined these agreements, with a combined fleet of more than 840 thousand railcars—about 60% of the network's freight fleet.
In the maritime transport track, two agreements were signed: one between Rosmorrechflot, Rosmorport, Novoroscement, and the Peton institute on modernizing water transport infrastructure, and another between the St. Petersburg city administration and the St. Petersburg Oil Terminal on upgrading capacity at the Greater Port of St. Petersburg, with investments totaling 6 billion rubles.
On the Northern Sea Route and the Trans-Arctic Transport Corridor, Rosatom head Alexei Likhachev spoke of readiness to handle freight volumes exceeding 100 million tons by 2030. In the discussion of the corridor's future model, benchmarks of 70–109 million tons by 2030 and 150 million tons by 2035 were cited under the baseline scenario, with a transition to year-round navigation.
At the plenary session, President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin announced a new stage in building up the country's merchant and icebreaker fleet, the construction of new types of tankers and other vessels, and the goal of entering the top 10 countries by total merchant fleet deadweight. At the same time, the government and the Ministry of Transport were tasked with making the Russian flag more attractive.
As of September 1, 2026, electronic shipping documents are to become mandatory for participants in freight transportation, and this changes the administrative mechanics of the market: the paper waybill moves out of the center of the operational cycle, replaced by a digital trail for each shipment. In the same vein, the Delo Group and the Astral Group signed an agreement to automate document management within the state system of electronic shipping documents. The possibilities for new transport-and-logistics cooperation with Saudi Arabia—including in digital document management—appear, for now, less clearly defined than the already-familiar cooperation with Emirati partners, including port transshipment at Jebel Ali and collaboration with the Emirati giant DP World.
At the forum, the "Russia–Saudi Arabia" session also addressed a comprehensive vision for the prospects of cooperation between the two countries. That vision was presented in the publication "Saudi Arabia: Guest Country of Honor at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum 2026," prepared by the Institute of State and Municipal Management of the Higher School of Economics on commission from the Roscongress Foundation specifically for the forum. Among other things, the book unpacks the transport-and-logistics dimensions of the two countries' cooperation. Saudi Arabia names, as one of the strategic goals of its development, the creation of a unique transport-and-logistics hub linking three continents—Asia, Africa, and Europe. And Russia, as the country that commands the largest transit space in the world, can lend this hub global significance.
Saudi Arabia's current transit capabilities rest largely on a well-developed system of ports—from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea—and a railway network spanning more than 5,500 km in total. And that is not the limit. Saudi Transport Minister Saleh bin Nasser Al-Jasser spoke of plans to expand the network to more than 8,000 km. The northern network connects Riyadh to the Jordanian border. The eastern network links Riyadh to the Persian Gulf coast. Against the backdrop of the ongoing conflict, the geography of Saudi Arabia's railway network has taken on practical relevance as a route. The country's rail authority, Saudi Arabia Railways, has launched an international rail corridor from the eastern Persian Gulf ports to the Al-Haditha border crossing on the Jordanian frontier. The route exceeds 1,700 km. A single train can carry more than 400 containers.
This line is reshaping Saudi Arabia's role in the region. The ports of Dammam and Jubail gain an overland outlet to Jordan. Through Al-Haditha, a route opens toward the Mediterranean coast and, in turn, via the eastern Mediterranean ports, to the Greek ports of Piraeus and Thessaloniki, which give eastern cargo entry into the pan-European transport corridors.
Here, Saudi Arabia emerges as a regional hegemon with well-developed transport infrastructure. A railway running from the Persian Gulf coast to the Mediterranean makes the country the holder of a unique transport passage. The potential synergy from combining the transport legs of Saudi Arabia and Russia—with its International North–South Transport Corridor—could fundamentally reshape the Eurasian transport-and-logistics landscape. The underlying logic of connecting Russia's transit space, the Caspian, and the Indian Ocean adds a new dimension to the prospects for connectivity among Eurasian transport routes.
With the escalation in the Persian Gulf, some cargo owners have come to see the transshipment capacity of the Emirati ports as something that needs a degree of redundancy. Saudi Arabia offers exactly that. And if one weighs this opportunity carefully, it becomes clear that the North–South corridor ceases to be a local one and turns into a transcontinental solution linking Africa and Eurasia. By this logic, Saudi Arabia becomes not merely a formal substitute for Dubai's port capabilities, but a major and promising transport leg of Eurasia with its own railway infrastructure. Its northern railway leads to Al-Haditha. Its western ports face Africa. Its eastern ports serve the Persian Gulf.
For Russia, this opens up a new routing significance to SPIEF. Electronic shipping documents provide cargo traceability. The North–South corridor provides a trunk line to the Indian Ocean. Saudi Arabia and Oman provide southern gateways to Africa.
Thus, a new backbone of Eurasian logistics is taking shape. Its northern section runs through Russia and the Caspian. Its southern section reaches out to Oman and Saudi Arabia. Its African extension rests on the Red Sea and the ports of the Indian Ocean. And it is precisely here that the future of Eurasian logistics is being forged."
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