Afghanistan has reached an agreement with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan to build a logistics center in the west of the country, which is intended to become the main transit hub for oil and other goods for regional exports from Russia to South Asia, according to Reuters.
The technical groups of the three countries will prepare a written agreement on the official plans for the hub, in which all three countries will invest funds after six months of negotiations.
The Ministry of Trade of Kazakhstan also stated its intention to build roads and a railway line through Afghanistan to connect the country with South Asia and the Persian Gulf, with the new logistics center serving as a key transshipment point.
It is expected that after the completion of the first phase of construction, the new logistics center's capacity will be one million tons of oil, but it is currently unknown when it will start operating. Afghanistan hopes that in the future, millions of tons of Russian oil will be transported through this center to South Asian countries.
Sanctions against Russian oil
After the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Western countries began discussing sanctions on oil and oil products from Russia. As a result, the G7 countries, the European Union, and allies imposed a price cap of $60 per barrel. Similar restrictions on supplies of oil products from Russia have been in place since February of last year.
The UD Treasury Department has stated that the G7 countries may soon review the upper limit on prices for Russian oil. This depends on market conditions and other factors.
In search of markets for its oil, Russia secretly supplies oil to North Korea in volumes that violate the sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council. This could lead to the US imposing new sanctions.