Russia Floats Rail Link to India to Avoid Maritime Risks

Russia wants to build a very long railway so that trains can carry goods all the way to the Indian Ocean and to India.

Right now, Russian ships must move through two narrow waterways called the Bosphorus and the Strait of Hormuz.

Those waters have become dangerous because the US and Israel attacked Iran on February 28, and Iran fought back.

Iran said it would block ships connected to the US, Israel, and their allies from passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

That matters because many ships carrying oil and gas travel through that strait.

So Russia is looking at land routes instead, passing through Turkmenistan, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Any route that reaches India would be acceptable.

A Russian leader named Marat Khusnullin shared this idea in a news interview with TASS.

He also said Russia's building industry could use an extra one trillion rubles a year to build more things.

Building this railway would be hard and expensive because of wars and safety problems in some of those countries.