Russia is ready to turn Siberia into a desert for the sake of water blackmail of Central Asia - intelligence

Moscow seeks to reorient its influence in Central Asia, where its traditional levers, primarily gas blackmail, no longer work. Russia is even ready to turn Siberia into a desert for the sake of water blackmail in Central Asia, UNN reports with reference to the Foreign Intelligence Service.

The Russian Academy of Sciences has resumed work on a large-scale infrastructure project that involves the partial transfer of water resources from the Ob River to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The initiative is presented as a tool for "stabilizing water supply in southern Russia," but in essence, it is a modernized version of the Soviet plan to "divert Siberian rivers." This project was abandoned in 1986 due to high and unpredictable environmental risks.

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According to intelligence, Moscow seeks to reorient its influence in Central Asia, where its traditional levers, primarily gas blackmail, no longer work. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are gas exporters focused primarily on the Chinese market, and the region's economy is increasingly relying on Chinese and Western capital. In these circumstances, Russia is betting on "water diplomacy," effectively forming a new instrument of political pressure on post-Soviet countries.

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Financial estimates underscore the scale of the plan: according to preliminary calculations, the project cost starts at $100 billion. But strategic costs could be significantly higher if environmental consequences are taken into account. Reorienting water flows can cause desertification in some areas and waterlogging in others, destabilize hydrological systems, and accelerate the melting of Arctic glaciers. Disruption of the water balance in Siberia could trigger large-scale climate shifts across much of Eurasia.

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