Showing posts with label DISEASES INFECTIOUS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label DISEASES INFECTIOUS. Show all posts

Thursday, October 1, 2020

Keep your mask on: Why a coronavirus vaccine won’t be the panacea many hope for

SOURCE:
https://thebulletin.org/2020/09/keep-your-mask-on-why-a-coronavirus-vaccine-wont-be-the-panacea-many-hope-for/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Newsletter_10012020&utm_content=DisruptiveTechnology_KeepMaskOn_09302020


Keep your mask on: Why a coronavirus vaccine won’t be the panacea many hope for



                               By

                  Eileen Choffnes



September 30, 2020


Facing the threat of a swine flu pandemic, President Gerald Ford's administration vaccinated more than 40 million people in 1976. The pandemic never materialized, and the program was linked to unexpected rates of Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a neurological condition. Credit: David Hume Kennerly/Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library via Wikimedia Commons.


Last week, we learned the United States had finally passed a threshold that at one time might have seemed unimaginable, 200,000 deaths from COVID-19. We passed this grim milestone despite months of lockdowns, PSAs about social distancing, mask wearing, and other interventions to slow the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. If low-tech measures have not worked well in the United States to stop COVID-19, what will? Many hope the global race to develop a vaccine against the novel coronavirus will bear fruit. The theory goes something like this: We will have a vaccine against the coronavirus; nearly everyone will want to be vaccinated; and, afterward, we can return to the way things were before COVID-19 became part of our lives. We can stop holding our breath, exhale, throw away our masks, and go back to living our lives.


But that’s not likely to happen anytime soon.


Since the 18th century vaccines have been enormously influential in saving millions from the death and illness associated with infectious diseases. In some cases, vaccines have totally eradicated these illnesses, including smallpox in humans and rinderpest in cattle. In other cases, childhood immunizations, such as those for mumps, measles, diphtheria, and rubella, have made getting sick or dying from once common diseases largely a thing of the past. That’s why we are eagerly awaiting a vaccine against COVID-19.


Vaccine development normally costs hundreds of millions of dollars and can extend over a decade while a vaccine candidate goes through a series of four stages of testing: from pre-clinical to clinical trials. Under normal circumstances, after up to five years of basic research into the immune response and an additional two years of animal testing, vaccine candidates begin moving through phase 1, 2, and 3 human clinical trials. Trials can involve tens of thousands of people and are used to establish the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine candidate.


Even after a vaccine candidate receives regulatory approval, it still must be manufactured at scale and delivered to the target population without losing potency (some vaccines require cold storage at minus 70 degrees Celsius). Health practitioners need to be trained to properly administer the vaccine. While President Donald Trump and government health experts have given conflicting timelines, the consensus view is that a vaccine won’t be widely available until sometime in 2021.


While many of us want a COVID-19 vaccine developed and distributed as quickly as possible, at least as important as a quick process is strong regulatory oversight that ensures vaccine development follows sound science and is not influenced by political considerations.


The annals of vaccine history are full of cautionary tales.


In 1955, at a time when summer polio outbreaks led to thousands of infections, the government announced the first vaccine against polio, a disease which—in the worst cases—can cause paralysis or even death. It affects mainly children, and by 1955 was a cause of profound fear in the United States. But a company that made the vaccine, Cutter Laboratories, failed to properly inactivate the virus before it was administered to 200,000 children; 40,000 kids contracted abortive polio, 200 were paralyzed, and 10 died. In the fallout from the Cutter Incident, as it’s known, the government strengthened regulatory oversight of vaccines.


In a case of hasty decision-making during an election year, epidemiologists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicted early in 1976 that an H1N1 swine flu influenza virus would cause a pandemic. They convinced the Ford Administration to prepare a vaccine against it. In late March, President Gerald Ford announced his goal of immunizing the entire population. Seven months later, the government began vaccinating more than 40 million people.

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Several hundred people contracted a rare neurological condition—Guillain-Barré Syndrome—after being vaccinated. While the syndrome is naturally occurring, a debate raged at the time about whether the cases could be directly linked to the vaccination program. According to a history of the vaccination campaign published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, the consensus view of epidemiologists was that cases were in excess of what would normally be expected. The program was suspended in mid-December. On top of that, the feared swine flu epidemic never materialized, and the Ford administration’s immunization campaign may have contributed to Jimmy Carter being elected president in 1976.


Problems can crop up even after clinical testing of a vaccine. In 1998, RotaShield, a rotavirus vaccine manufactured by Wyeth, was licensed for use in the United States. Clinical trials in the United States, Finland, and Venezuela had found it to be 80-to-100 percent effective at preventing severe diarrhea caused by a strain of rotavirus, and researchers had detected no statistically significant serious adverse effects. One year later, Wyeth withdrew it from the market after it was discovered that the vaccine may have contributed to an increased risk for bowel obstruction in 1 out of every 10,000 vaccinated infants. There was a seven-year hiatus until rival manufacturers were able to introduce new vaccines against rotavirus that were safer and more effective.


Some researchers worry that COVID-19 vaccine trials are not designed to run long enough to determine whether vaccine candidates will be effective at achieving their most important goal: preventing serious illness.


In a recent opinion piece in The New York Times, Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine, and Peter Doshi, a professor and medical journal editor, analyzed the recently published trial protocols for three leading candidate vaccines produced by Moderna, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca. They argue that the trials may prove only that the vaccines ward off mild COVID-19. For a trial participant to be counted as sick, a cough and a positive test will suffice under Moderna and Pfizer’s protocol, and mild symptoms plus a fever under AstraZeneca’s. The trials won’t establish that the vaccines protect against moderate or severe disease, or that they lower the risk of hospitalization, admission to the intensive care unit, and death. “To say a vaccine works should mean that most people no longer run the risk of getting seriously sick,” the authors wrote. “That’s not what these trials will determine.”



According to a report in The Washington Post, the Food and Drug Administration may require vaccine makers to find at least a handful of severe COVID-19 cases among the clinical trial participants who receive the placebo treatment as well as to follow participants for two months after they receive their second vaccine injection.


As Topol and Doshi argue, giving a vaccine to hundreds of millions of people that has only been tested on tens of thousands for a short period of time, “requires a real leap of faith.” Children, adolescents, and pregnant women have been excluded from these trials; while those with pre-existing conditions, the elderly, Blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans may be underrepresented in some late-stage clinical trials.

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From the armed protestors who stood on state house steps demanding an end to pandemic lockdowns to altercations over mask wearing, the United States’s pandemic response has been highly politicized. Trump’s insistence that a vaccine will be available before the November 3 election has, for obvious reasons, only exacerbated those concerns. So has his perceived meddling in the Food and Drug Administration’s regulatory process for coronavirus therapeutics such as hydroxychloroquine and convalescent plasma that lacked strong scientific evidence to support their use.


Politicization of a COVID-19 vaccine could lead to even greater vaccine skepticism in the United States—to say nothing about what could happen if a flawed vaccine were approved for political expediency.


Even if a vaccine is found to be safe and effective, even if the government is able to get it distributed efficiently, it still won’t necessarily be the panacea many people hope for. Enough people need to get vaccinated to either prevent an epidemic or stop an ongoing one. Many in the United States are already wary of vaccines, and the so-called anti-vax movement has been growing for years. In 2018, only one in three people received the seasonal influenza vaccine. If there’s such low demand for a COVID-19 vaccine, the prospects for quashing the pandemic through inoculation could be dim.


A team of investigators lead by Bruce Y. Lee demonstrated in a computer modelling study that if 75 percent of the population gets vaccinated, the vaccine needs to be 70 percent effective in order to prevent an epidemic and at least 80 percent effective to extinguish an ongoing one. The thresholds are even higher if just 60 percent of the population gets vaccinated: the vaccine must be 80 percent effective to prevent an epidemic and 100 percent effective to extinguish one.


The Food and Drug Administration’s current threshold for COVID-19 vaccine approval is an efficacy of 50 percent, which is a pretty low bar. Even if 100 percent of the population of the United States received a vaccine that was 50 percent effective, we might not achieve vaccine-induced herd immunity.


Despite the growing enthusiasm from some about the COVID-19 vaccine trials, and the pre-ordering of hundreds of millions of units of vaccines from manufacturers whose products have yet to establish their safety and efficacy, a COVID-19 vaccine is unlikely to be the magic bullet that ends the pandemic.


A vaccine against COVID-19, once one becomes available, is only one tool in a tool box of collective and individual actions that will need to be taken to bring the spread of the virus under control. According to Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the United States should not expect a return to normal until “well into 2021, maybe even towards the end of 2021.”


Robert Redfield, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, appeared to try and lower expectations in a vaccine and to boost low-tech interventions during a recent congressional hearing. “If I don’t get an immune response, the vaccine is not going to protect me,” 

he said. “This face mask will.”


So how do we control this pandemic while we are waiting to exhale? Through the rigorous application of low-tech practices like mask wearing; COVID-19 testing of symptomatic and asymptomatic people (with results available within hours instead of days); contact tracing for positives cases; physical distancing; and hand hygiene. While not “sexy” these measures worked a century ago during the Spanish Flu pandemic to control the spread of disease in the United States and elsewhere, and they can work again during this pandemic.


As the coronavirus crisis shows, we need science now more than ever.









Wednesday, September 30, 2020

 SOURCE:

https://www.wionews.com/opinions-blogs/chinas-belt-and-road-initiative-pinpoints-fundamental-issues-of-our-times-331165



Chinas Belt and Road pinpoints 
fundamental issues of our times


                           By 

            James M. Dorsey





Based on remarks at the RSIS book launch of Alan Chong and Quang Minh Pham (eds), Critical Reflections on China’s Belt and Road Initiative, Palgrave MacMillan, 2020

Political scientists Alan Chong and Quang Min Pham bring with their edited volume originality as well as dimensions and perspectives to the discussion about the Belt and Road that are highly relevant but often either unrecognized or underemphasized.

The book is about much more than the material aspects of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. In fact, various chapter authors use the Belt and Road to look at perhaps the most fundamental issue of our times: how does one build a global world order and societies that are inclusive, cohesive and capable of managing interests of all stakeholders as well as political, cultural, ethnic and religious differences in ways that all are recognized without prejudice and/or discrimination?

In doing so, the book introduces a moral category into policy and policy analysis. That is an important and commendable effort even if it may be a hard sell in an increasingly polarized world in which prejudice and bias and policies that flow from it have gained new legitimacy and become mainstream in various parts of the world.

It allows for the introduction of considerations that are fundamental to managing multiple current crises that have been accentuated by the pandemic and its economic fallout. 

One of those is put forward in the chapter of the late international affairs scholar Lily Ling in which she writes about the need for a global agenda to take the requirements of ordinary people into account to ensure a more inclusive world. The question is how does one achieve that.

It is a question that permeates multiple aspects of our individual and collective lives. 

If the last decade was one of defiance and dissent, of a breakdown in confidence in political leadership and systems and of greater authoritarianism and autocracy to retain power, this new decade, given the pandemic and economic crisis, is likely to be a continuation of the last one on steroids. 

One only has to look at continued Arab popular revolts, Black Lives Matter, the anti-lockdown protests, and the popularity of conspiracy theories like QAnon. All of this is compounded by decreasing trust in US leadership and the efficacy of Western concepts of governance, democratic backsliding, and the handling of the pandemic in America and Europe.

Mr. Chong conceptualizes in his chapter perceived tolerance along ancient silk roads as stemming from what he terms ‘mercantile harmony’ among peoples and elites rather than states. It was rooted, in Mr. Chong’s mind, in empathy, a sense of spirituality and a mercantile approach towards the exchange of ideas and goods. 

It was also informed by the solidarity of travellers shaped by the fact that they encountered similar obstacles and threats on their journeys. And it stems from the connectivity needs of empires that built cities and roads to retain their control that Mr. Chong projects as civilization builders.

There may be an element of idealization of the degree of tolerance along the ancient Silk Road and the assertion that the new silk road is everything that the old silk road was not. But the notion of the role of non-state, civil society actors is key to the overall quest for inclusiveness. 

So is the fact that historic travellers like Fa-Hsien, Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta grappled with the very same issues that today’s world is attempting to tackle: the parameters of human interaction, virtue, diversity, governance, materialism, and the role of religion.

The emphasis on a moral category and the comparison of the ancient and the new Silk Road frames a key theme in the book: the issue of the China-centric, top down nature of the Belt and Road. Vietnamese China scholar Trinh Van Dinh positions the Belt and Road as the latest iteration of China’s history of the pioneering of connectivity as the reflection of a regime that is at the peak of its power. 

Mr. Van Dinh sees the Belt and Road as the vehicle that will potentially revitalize Chinese economic development. It is a proposition on which the jury is still out in a world that could split into two distinct camps. 

It is a world in which China brings much to the table but that is also populated by black and grey swans, some of which are of China’s own making. These include the favouring of Chinese companies and labour in Belt and Road projects, although to be fair Western development aid often operated on the same principle. But it also includes China’s brutal response to perceived threats posed by ethnic and religious minorities.

That may be one arena where the failure to fully consider the global breakdown in confidence in leadership and systems comes to haunt China. That is potentially no more the case than in the greater Middle East that stretches from the Atlantic coast of Africa into the Chinese province of Xinjiang.

Its not an aspect that figures explicitly in political scientist Manouchehr Dorraj’s contribution to the book on China’s relationship with Iran as well as Saudi Arabia but lingers in the background of his perceptive analysis of anticipated changes in the region’s lay of the land. 

Mr. Dooraj focusses on three aspects that are important as one watches developments unfold: The impact of shifts in the energy mix away from oil coupled with the emergence of significant reserves beyond the Middle East, Iran’s geopolitical advantages compared to Saudi Arabia when it comes to the architecture of the Belt and Road, and the fact that China is recognizing that refraining from political engagement is no longer viable. 

However, China’s emphasis on state-to-state relationships could prove to be a risky strategy assuming that the Middle East will retain its prominence in protests that seek to ensure better governance and more inclusive social and economic policies. 

That takes on added significance given that potential energy shifts could reduce Chinese dependence on Middle Eastern energy as well as repeated assertions by Chinese intellectuals that call into question the relative importance of China’s economic engagement in the region as well as its ranking in Chinese strategic thinking.

The implications of the book’s partial emphasis on what Mr. Chong terms philosophical and cultural dialogue reach far beyond the book’s confines. They go to issues that many of us are grappling with but have no good answers. 

In his conclusion, Mr. Chong suggests that in order to manage different value systems and interests one has to water down the Westphalian dogma of treating national interests as zero-sum conceptions. 

One just has to look at the pandemic the world is trying to come to grips with, the need for a global health care governance that can confront future pandemics, and the world’s environmental crisis to realize the relevance of former Singaporean diplomat and public intellectual Kishore Mahbubani’s description of the nation state system as a boat with 193 cabins and cabin administrators but no captain at the helm. 

Mr. Chong looks for answers in the experience of ancient Silk Road travellers. That may be a standard that a Belt and Road managed by an autocratic Chinese leadership that is anything but inclusive would at best struggle to meet.

A podcast version of this story is available on Soundcloud, Itunes, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, Spreaker, Pocket Casts, Tumblr, Podbean, Audecibel, Patreon and Castbox.

Dr. James M. Dorsey is an award-winning journalist and a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. He is also a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture in Germany.

Monday, September 28, 2020

 As leaders, the Politicians surely understand, that to emerge as a ‘super power’ will never be easy. Hon’ble Ministers Shri Rajnath Singh’s and Mr Jaishankar’s visits abroad give us some security---how much---we don’t know. The newspapers give us assurance that no more build up will be there from either side. But is our adversary trustworthy?

Recently the Defence Minister acceded that it is not possible to resolve border issues with talks. We need ‘credible deterrence’ to in order to resolve the border issue, even if it be with talks. The soldiers' “Fire and Fury” is intact, but of not much value. The Eastern Theatre also is threatened by unforeseen action. Chinese are slowly inching their way into eastern Bhutan and the day is not far off when our entire defence preparedness will be challenged. Our troops could be spread very thin over the 3500 kms borders.

China is suffering its own internal problems of Covid, another tick borne virus that carries with it the risk of becoming another pandemic. It faces unemployment and falling employment rates, Hongkong unrest and is being boxed in by the US and Russia. We too must be adequately prepared. China is being very devious, in keeping India occupied with border skirmishes on all fronts, so as to thwart our multi directional thrust in achieving global positioning. We must not be outwitted.

“1962, A War That Wasn’t” by Shiv Kunal Verma, prepares us for such scenarios that we, as a nation, do not envision because we trust our Netas, our hierarchy of bureaucracy and the forces, to lead kindly light and to lead us to pasture. It provides insight to lay people, looking for answers to the fiasco that was 1962. But what it truly clarified was that we lost not to the Chinese, we LOST TO OURSELVES.; Our faulty planning and lack of foresight. It must not happen again.

2020 has been an ugly year. Let us not add another chapter of pain and loss to it, by being ostriches with our head in the proverbial sand of “China will not attempt to transgress”. It ALREADY has.

We, as a country, are only as strong as the hands that hold the reins. The stronger those hands are, the stronger we shall be. China has declared its intent. We are a nation threatened by aggression. Defeat and accepting subservience to treachery, in this time, when India is aiming for super power status and world leadership, is not an option, dear countrymen. Let us not nurture feet of clay. Instead, be sure footed and strong. It is the need of the time to be resolute in achieving our destiny, in the comity of nations, as is ordained.

( Views expressed in the letter are personal) 

India’s Defense Modernization: Implications For Pakistan – OpEd (R)

 SOURCE:

https://www.eurasiareview.com/26092020-indias-defense-modernization-implications-for-pakistan-oped/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+eurasiareview%2FVsnE+%28Eurasia+Review%29





VIEW  FROM ACROSS THE FENCE-OpEd 



India’s Defense Modernization: Implications For Pakistan 


Under a nationalistic and aggressive regime in New Delhi, India is aggressively pursuing the development and acquisition of refined and high-end defense technologies that can alter the nuclear balance in the subcontinent region. The Indian efforts to modernize its military pose a credible threat to the strategic stability of South Asia. This drive also takes its motivation as India considers itself on the march to becoming a great power in the evolving global order. Having two rival nuclear states i.e. Pakistan and China on its border. New Delhi is facing a security tri-lemma that could undermine its geopolitical ambitions. From India’s entry into export control cartels, New Delhi is seeking to acquire encrypted defense technologies from its major defense partners. Great powers are favoring India to achieve modernized capabilities contrary to the norms of nuclear non-proliferation given the emerging geopolitical environment.

 In South Asian region, the development of nukes and the arms race between India and Pakistan together with the continuing issue of Kashmir has brought them to a nuclear flashpoint, which has augmented the possibility of stimulating stability-instability paradox. Indian military is constantly revolutionizing through doctrinal transformation and massively purchasing military hardware. India is supporting its quest with massive military development in terms of purchasing new arsenal, revolutionizing Indian military through technological development and also binding itself within strategic and military agreements like Communications Compatibility and Security Agreement (COMCASA). India is ambitious to develop and enhance its warfare capabilities in the domain of hybrid, conventional/sub-conventional, and surgical strike capabilities. The aggressive strategic posturing by India has led Pakistan to reciprocate with the operationalization of full-spectrum deterrence while relying on its tactical nuclear weapons. India’s strategic outlook has taken a drastic transformation that has altered the power equation in South Asia, which has created security predicaments for Pakistan.

Since the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan in 1947, the security environment of South Asia is in a state of flux where both states are still rivals and have disputes over several pressing issues. The porous border between India and Pakistan is one of the most volatile and dangerous borders across the globe. The historical rivalry together with unresolved issues of the partition has the potential to trigger an armed conflict or may lead to a total war between India and Pakistan where one cannot rule out the possibility of nuclear exchange. 

Even though both India and Pakistan possess nuclear weapons, conventional deterrence is a prerequisite for strategic stability in South Asia. However, it is widely speculated that India’s defense modernization will trouble the delicate balance of conventional military power between India and Pakistan and will have worrisome implications for the strategic stability of South Asia. To keep up with the pace of modernization and to operationalize its military might be including the development of Network Centric Warfare and Electronic Warfare capabilities. India has recently increased its defense budget manifold. During the fiscal year 2016 – 2017, the defense budget of India have reached up to US$52.2 billion and it is anticipated that the number will increase further. India is the fastest-growing economy and its intention to become a regional hegemon as well as a global superpower is evident from its military modernization. Based on Indian strategic thinking, it is generally believed that the military modernization of India is specifically against Pakistan. India’s military modernization is a defining feature of Indian quest for regional hegemony and India is able to maximize and enhance its military capability through economic development that the country has achieved so far. 

Furthermore, India has also developed strategic partnership with different countries including Russia, America, Israel, and France. The prime purpose of Indian military modernization is to develop combat capabilities to achieve strategic benefits and to secure its territorial integrity. India is seeking to become powerful enough to alleviate any element of surprise attack and to maintain credible deterrence against its adversaries. Military modernizations help India to enhance its defensive as well as offensive capabilities. It also grabs India to implement its hybrid warfare strategies and enlarge its political and strategic power regionally as well as globally. India is seeking strategic inconsistency as compare to its neighboring rivals most specifically for Pakistan both at conventional and non-conventional level. Although India justifies its military modernization as a response to an imminent threat from China and Pakistan.

However, its offensive posture and deployments of troops suggests that the arms buildup is purely Pakistan centric, which will significantly change the dimensions of Indo-Pak security environment. India is heavily investing in purchasing, Airborne Early warning system (AWACS) and Rafael jetsfrom Israel and France respectively. Furthermore, India is also spending on its nuclear submarines, satellites, artillery guns, and intelligence equipment’s.Indian military modernization is accredited to several factors. The primary motivation behind India’s military modernization is its power tussle with China. Territorial disputes such as Kashmir dispute and Dokhlam issue and a race for regional dominance has always triggered India to adopt a China-centric approach. With its rising economic and military might, China is a significant threat for Indian hegemonic designs.

On other hand, China’s support to Pakistan to strengthen its economic and defense machinery is another added factor instigating India to view China as their biggest rival. Indo-US strategic alliance that has emerged as a containment of China policy by India and the US is another important factor to be looked into while discussing this matter. The alleged String of Pearl’s policy of China to counter its Malacca Strait dilemma is viewed as a major threat to Indian maritime dominance in the Indian Ocean region. The aggressive mindset of policymakers in India has intensified this power struggle between India and China which has a crippling impact on the strategic stability of South Asia. Here appears a triangular domino effect, where the strategic competition between India and China has compelled India to modernize its military and attain lethal weapons.

Thus, the current India’s military posture put Pakistan’s defence credibility in danger as well as creating a challenging situation for the regional peace of South-Asia.



                    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


*Saad Naveed, Department of Defense and Strategic studies Quaid e Azam University 



PROJECT SARASWATI : EUROPE INLAND WATERWAYS -The Geopolitical Link Between the Baltic and Black Seas: Belarus and the Strategic E40 Waterway

 SOURCE::

https://jamestown.org/program/the-geopolitical-link-between-the-baltic-and-black-seas-belarus-and-the-strategic-e40-waterway/?mc_cid=677c7fb507&mc_eid=2aedc83db6

FOR PICTORIAL VIEWING

https://www.google.com/search?safe=active&sxsrf=ALeKk01E67BbaEbMxdtBQmKj4cOkeFDhxw:1601297267510&source=univ&tbm=isch&q=Belarus+and+the+Strategic+E40+Waterway&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj_4byW8YvsAhVGwTgGHQS-Du0QjJkEegQICRAB&biw=1920&bih=975#imgrc=JbVv86oweNCZpM





The Geopolitical Link Between the Baltic and Black Seas: Belarus and the Strategic E40 Waterway      

                                                        


September 25, 2020 



Executive Summary

The proposed E40 Waterway would connect the Baltic and Black seas, from the Port of Gdańsk, in Poland, to the Port of Kherson, in Ukraine, running through Belarus. This riverine route offers numerous potential benefits to its participating countries, such as providing greater integration, diversifying trade routes, and developing local regions. For Belarus, the completion of the waterway means closer integration with EU-NATO member Poland and Western-leaning Ukraine, and economic benefits such as access to transport corridors leading to increased trade with Turkey, Central Asia, the South Caucasus and further afield, alongside the strategic benefit of direct access to the Baltic and Black seas.

At the same time, however, the development of the E40 presents a number of drawbacks, including fierce environmental opposition, questions of economic viability, expensive bottlenecks and funding concerns. The options for financing the more than $14.5 billion project are varied, with potential investors including the European Union, the Three Seas Initiative and states such as China. Yet funding looks to be dependent on the E40’s economic benefits offsetting the potential environmental damage. This waterway has so far attracted varying degrees of support from the governments of Ukraine, Poland and Belarus.

Until recently, the E40 Waterway proposal highlighted Minsk’s evolving geopolitical outlook, underscoring the Belarusian state’s willingness to deepen cooperation with Ukraine and Poland. The current political crisis and social unrest in Belarus following the August presidential election, however, has seen relations between the partners cool considerably. That said, Belarus’s long-term outlook may still see the country seeking closer integration with both Poland and Ukraine eventually. To date, construction of the E40 Waterway has faced significant setbacks. Nonetheless, Ukraine has already begun dredging part of the route, Belarus had approached investors for the construction of a deep-water port, and Poland is investing heavily to enhance its position as a key transit hub, demonstrating that the project is by no means dead in the water.

 

Introduction

The E40 Waterway is a proposed 2,000-kilometer inland shipping route linking the Black Sea with the Baltic. The waterway would flow from Gdańsk, Poland, to Kherson, Ukraine, running through Belarus and along five rivers: the Vistula, the Bug, the Pina, the Pripyat and the Dnieper. The proposed route would also pass alongside major cities in the region, including Brest (Belarus), Warsaw (Poland), and Kyiv (Ukraine). To an extent, the course is already navigable, but use of the route as a complete waterway is hindered by the section between Warsaw and Brest, along the Bug, that requires the construction of a new canal. Development of the E40 also involves deepening existing waterways and building locks, dams and weirs to ensure consistent water levels.

The route is of particular significance to landlocked Belarus, giving the country more direct access to both the Baltic and Black seas, along with potential links to other Western inland waterways via Poland such as the E70, which, when completed, will allow for passage all the way to Berlin and Rotterdam. The E40 could also result in numerous geopolitical transformations and benefits for Central and Eastern Europe, further raising Poland’s role as a regional leader, reducing Belarus’s economic dependencies on Russia, and offering Belarus and Ukraine closer ties to the European Union through trade and infrastructure. The localized benefits could be numerous as well, with large investment in the communities through which the waterway would pass.

One of the EU’s current priorities is the restoration and development of sustainable transport, including inland waterways. The European Commission’s 2018 white paper, “Roadmap to a Single European Transport Area—Towards a Competitive and Resource Efficient Transport System,” considered transport by inland waterways as key to the sustainability of the European transport system. The EU aims to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 60 percent by 2050; moreover, it wants to shift at least 30 percent of all roadway transit over 300 km to rail and water by 2030, and to raise this proportion to 50 percent by 2050.[1] Other ongoing development plans in the region, such as the Three Seas Initiative and Chinese infrastructure investment through the Belt and Road Initiative, could feasibly help realize the project.

A number of serious concerns persist, however, including the environmental cost of the project as well as questions of funding, economic viability and the waterway’s advantages over railroad investment. The funding options available, such as through the EU, largely depend on the proposed waterway’s ability to offset the environmental concerns. Meanwhile, the contentious August presidential election in Belarus, followed by heavy-handed government repressions, Minsk’s restored reliance on Moscow, a possible economic downturn and forthcoming EU sanctions, have raised additional considerable challenges to the construction of the waterway, at least in the short term.

Despite those apprehensions, Belarus and Ukraine are at the early stages of implementing the E40 Waterway. Belarus intends to build a new deep-water port in the Nizhniye Zhary village to handle extra cargo and has been in talks with Turkish private investors.[2] Ukraine also announced an investment of 80 million hryvnia ($3.15 million) to begin dredging the Dnieper River.[3] In October 2019, during a visit to Ukraine, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka stressed the benefits of the waterway, saying “Ukraine’s and Belarus’s transit appeal can be enhanced by navigation along the Dnieper River, along the Pripyat River, and its integration into the international [waterway] E40.”[4] In April 2020, Ukraine reported that during the first three months of 2020, the volume of dredging works carried out was more than four times that for the same period in 2019,[5] including dredging on the Kherson sea channels, a key part of the E40 route that feeds into the Black Sea. Poland is currently conducting a second feasibility study on the E40, due for release in late 2020.[6]

History of Waterways in the E40 Region

Goods and people have traveled along inland waterways since time immemorial, and most of the world’s major cities are still in proximity to rivers and coastal areas. The designers of the E40 have emphasized their intention to restore a previously existing waterway and reinstate this pathway for modern usage, drawing on its historic legacy. Notably, the famous medieval trade path “from the Varangians to the Greeks” ran through the same region, from the markets of Scandinavia and the southern Baltic shores all the way to the Dnieper. The proposed E40 waterway would resurrect a part of this passage that the Viking longships navigated on their way to Constantinople to connect with the trans-Eurasian Silk Road.

The different segments of the E40 Waterway each have their own long history of trade. During the Early Middle Ages, the Vistula River in Poland was used to transport mainly salt upstream from Gdańsk and downstream from mines in Bochnia and Wieliczka. Copper was also carried down the Vistula from mines in present-day Slovakia.[7] Salt and amber were some of Poland’s main natural resources, and the Gdańsk Bay area was considered the center of the European amber trade and craft industry.

The canals along the route also have a long history, such as the Dnieper-Bug Canal, which was first constructed in 1775 to grant access to Baltic ports. Originally named the Royal Canal, it was built by the last king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Stanisław August Poniatowski. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Royal Canal was of strategic importance for the Russian Empire, as it was the only navigable water route connecting the Black and Baltic seas. Following Russia’s repudiation of the Treaty of Paris in 1870, which had called for the demilitarization of the Black Sea following the Crimean War, five destroyers that were part of the Black Sea Fleet were transferred from the Baltic Sea to Sevastopol via the canal in 1886 and 1890.[8]

The Dnieper River connected with the Baltic Sea by the old Royal, Berezina and Oginsky canals, through part of the E40 route, but they were almost completely destroyed during the Second World War. The Soviets had plans to build an integrated, deep-water, inland navigation system, similar to the E40 proposals, by connecting the Western Dvina, Dnieper, Don, Volga and Kama, en route to the Black and Caspian Seas. The Pripyat and Niemen would also then have allowed for a connection to the Baltic Sea, and the Dnieper, with the Niemen and Pripyat, would serve as a route down to the Black Sea. However, the Soviets never fully integrated the water system as they became more interested in connecting the Baltic with the White Sea, the Volga with the Baltic Sea, and the Volga with the Don as strategic linchpins for defense.[9]

At the end of the 20th century, the European Agreement on the Main Inland Waterways of International Importance (AGN) was accepted by the United Nations Economic Commission, in Geneva. It established a network of European waterways within the framework of the broader European transport network (TNT-T). This led to the selection of waterways of European importance, one of which was the E40 (Gdańsk–Warsaw–Brest–Pinsk–Kyiv–Kherson) route.[10]

Current Waterway Use in Europe

The share of inland waterway shipping in cargo carriages in Poland, Belarus and Ukraine is significantly lower than the EU average. The mean EU-wide use of such inland navigation makes up 6.7 percent of freight transport, compared with 75 percent road and 17 percent rail.[11] In Belarus inland water navigation makes up 0.96 percent of cargo transported, at four million tons of freight, compared with 40.85 percent road and 29.71 percent rail. In Ukraine the amount of cargo transported by inland waterways is 0.23 percent (68 percent road, 24 percent rail), and in Poland 0.38 percent (75 percent road, 12 percent rail).

In the EU, the share of containers transported on inland waterways increased every year from 2009 to 2017, with more than 10 percent growth in 2014 and reaching 11.3 percent growth in 2017.[12] However, when analyzing freight transport, the 2018 figures reveal a decrease of –8.3 percent from 2017.[13] This was predominantly due to low water levels on the Rhine, one of Europe’s core shipping routes, which made parts of the Rhine-Danube corridor unnavigable. In 2019, Europe saw a sharp contraction in the manufacturing sector due to trade tensions and this led to a further decline in transportation of goods on inland waterways. Container transport on the Rhine fell 4.0 percent in 2019 compared with 2018.[14]  In Europe, the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium are by far the main contributors to inland waterway transport. These countries are hosts for large transit ports (Rotterdam and Antwerp) or a major source or destination for container movements (Germany).

The main types of goods transported on waterways in the EU in 2018 included metal ores, coke and refined petroleum products, chemicals, nuclear and agricultural products. The main cargo currently transported by ships on rivers in Belarus are sand, gravel, building stone, wood, potash, granulated slag, and heavy and oversized cargo. Freight on inland waterways in Ukraine includes construction materials, iron ore, grain, coal, coke and fertilizers. In Poland, the majority of goods transported by inland waterways are metal ores and other mining and quarrying products, as well as coal. The E40 is predicted to transport primarily coal, ore minerals, construction materials, chemicals, and fertilizers and agricultural goods.[15]

Goods transported by inland waterways are closely connected with the transshipment (the movement of cargo from one vessel to another) of goods at seaports, as rivers and canals can act as a continuation of sea routes. Currently, the transshipment of goods at Western European ports occurs at a much larger volume than at the seaports linked to the E40 in Poland and Ukraine. In 2017, the largest port in Europe, Rotterdam, handled 467 million tons of cargo—11.5 times higher than the Port of Gdańsk, in Poland (40.6 million tons). The Ukrainian Kherson Sea Port handled only 3.3 million tons in 2017. However, a total of 133 million tons of cargo were transshipped through the seaports of Ukraine combined, which is comparable to the performance of individual Western European ports.[16]

Poland and Ukraine are seeing considerable port growth and development. In October 2019, the Port of Gdańsk outlined huge expansion plans designed to double its cargo volumes to 100 million tons a year. This included investment opportunities in a new €2.8 billion ($3.2 billion) Central Port, cited as “the biggest maritime investment project in Europe.” The Port of Gdańsk grew by 20 percent in 2018 and 9 percent in 2019.[17] Furthermore, in 2019, the Kherson Port in Ukraine handled 18 percent more cargo than in 2018, and there is good reason to expect further growth due to the inclusion of Ukraine in the routes of the Chinese Silk Road and the Transport Corridor Europe–Caucasus–Asia (TRACECA). The first cargo utilizing this route was delivered in 2019.[18]

Overview of Work and Costs of the E40 Waterway

The overall cost of the waterway is estimated at €12,720 billion ($14.5 billion) in the initial feasibility study. This includes the cost of environmental compensatory measures, estimated at between €420 million and €600 million ($480 million–$680 million). The Belarusian total is predicted to cost between €96 million and €171 million ($110 million–$195 million), and this includes work such as the reconstruction of existing hydrotechnical structures on the Dnieper-Bug Canal, engineering work to increase the dimensions of the navigation channel, the creation of a navigable section of the waterway on the Polish-Belarusian border, and construction of the Zhirovskoe reservoir.

Polish costs are estimated at €11,915.19 million ($13.5 billion), the bulk of the overall estimate. The price tag of the Polish section is so high due to an unnavigable section along the Bug Canal, which requires the construction of a second canal alongside the Bug to connect the Vistula and Mukhavets rivers. The costs also include the restoration of the Vistula waterway and resuming the navigability of the Lower and Middle Vistula.

Estimated Ukrainian costs are the lowest out of the three countries, at €31 million ($35 million), and involve capital investment for the reconstruction of the Dnieper navigation locks along with further maintenance costs. These expenditures are by no means inclusive of all aspects of the waterway and are based on initial estimates.

Impact of the Waterway on Belarus

Benefits

Benefits of the E40 Waterway include the possibility of transporting six million tons of cargo per year along the route, ensuring significant trade flows among Belarus, Poland and Ukraine as well as between the EU, Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries and further afield. The E40 would boost regional trade through the Black Sea with Turkey, the South Caucasus and Central Asia, enhancing the region’s position as the “trade gates” to Europe. In Ukraine, the multi-modal TRACECA route links Europe through the Caucasus and the Black Sea with Central Asian countries. With the exception of Russia, some of the biggest importers of Belarusian goods are the Netherlands, Ukraine, Poland, and Germany.[19] The additional construction of the E70 Waterway in Poland, which would connect riverine routes from Rotterdam with Kaliningrad, would create further benefits for the E40 as it would become a substantial artery connecting the Black Sea to Western Europe. Belarus’s trade relations with the Netherlands and Germany would also benefit from having this connected inland waterway system in place. Neighboring Russia is unlikely to see the construction of the E40 as a genuine threat to trade relations as the initial economic benefits for Belarus will be small in comparison with Russian trade.

Waterways are one of the most environmentally friendly forms of transport, with associated CO2 emissions five times lower than from road freight transport. One barge can replace up to 40 trucks carrying containers, dramatically relieving road congestion. Inland shipping may be a slower form of transport, at 230 hours from Gdańsk to Kherson as opposed to 66 hours by rail and 31 hours by road, but it is significantly cheaper. A proposed rate for the transportation of forty 40-foot containers by water from Gdańsk to Kherson would amount to €56,000 ($63,000), while transport by rail along the same distance would cost more than €82,000 ($93,000), and €78,000 ($89,000) by road.[20]

Forecast studies conducted by the Maritime Institute in Gdańsk indicate that the cargo types with the greatest growth potential for shifting to inland waterways are bulk cargo, namely coal, sand and gravel, but also building materials, energy resources, municipal waste, and heavy and oversized cargo. The majority of these materials are already transported in small amounts on waterways in Belarus.

The E40 Waterway could lead to investment in the regions through which it flows, potentially leading to rising living standards and the creation of new jobs, particularly at the construction stage. New jobs would also be created on the water border crossings in administration and customs. Belarus Digest reported that several major firms in southern Belarus could take advantage of the waterway to transport large volumes of cargo, such as the Mikashevichy-based firm Hranit, which has been using the Pripyat to transport its granite for many years. The Mazyr oil refinery or the Salihorsk-based potash company Belaruskali could also transport their products using river routes.[21]

Brest, in southwestern Belarus, is an example of one of the primary regions that could benefit from the E40. Companies of the Brest region maintain trade and economic cooperation with more than 100 countries worldwide: trade partners include Russia, Poland, Germany, China, Ukraine, Norway, Kazakhstan, the Netherlands, Italy and Lithuania. Businesses in the Brest region currently account for around 5 percent of foreign trade turnover with Poland. The Brest Free Economic Zone (FEZ Brest), which borders Poland along 10 km of the Bug River, was founded in 1996. FEZ Brest is currently home to 71 resident companies from about 20 countries. Since the establishment of the zone, the total volume of investment has exceeded $1.6 billion, with $107 million invested in 2019.[22] Brest is also located on the E30 Berlin–Warsaw–Brest–Minsk–Moscow highway route, a key transit corridor. The railway junction in Brest is one of the largest in Central and Eastern Europe, handling cargo in transit between the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries and the countries of Western Europe. The E40 could further enhance Brest’s regional role in trade.

Drawbacks

One of the biggest drawbacks to this waterway’s realization is the environmental impact from its construction. Despite waterways being one of the more environmentally friendly modes of transport, the actual construction of the waterway could have a serious impact on the surrounding environment, and environmental opposition has been some of the most vocal. Several civic associations have already been established to protest against the E40 for environmental reasons, such as BirdLife, BUEE and Bahna in Belarus, NECU and USPB in Ukraine, and OTOP in Poland. The repercussions of a waterway’s artificial alteration are only partly predictable, and in all three partner countries this is causing serious concern.

In Belarus, the E40 would run through the Western Polesie and Polesie Prypeckie, also known as “Europe’s Amazon.” About 70 species living in Polesie Prypeckie are listed in the Red Book of the Republic of Belarus, a list of plant and animal species threatened with extinction, or are protected in accordance with international obligations. The system of protected areas in Polesie Prypeckie includes Pripyat National Park, 10 national nature reserves and 13 nature reserves of local importance, as well as 30 natural monuments. Another issue for Belarus is the fortress of Brest, with high historic and cultural value, which is on the Polish-Belarusian border between the Mukhavets and the Bug. The section of the route connecting the Polish part of the waterway with the Mukhavets River must be completed without violating the historical fortifications.

For Poland, the new canal along the Bug River could be in conflict with the protection of areas such as the Bug Landscape Park and five Natura 2000 protected areas situated in the planned construction zones. However, according to EU guidance on inland water transport and Natura 2000, it is noted that Natura 2000 sites are not designed to be “no development zones” and new developments are not excluded. Instead, their designation requires that any new developments be undertaken in a way that safeguards the local species and habitat.[23]

The Ukrainian part of the E40 would pass only 2.5 kilometers from the nuclear reactor in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Matti Maasikas, the head of the EU delegation to Ukraine, warned that during construction, dredging works in the Kyiv reservoir could disturb sludge contaminated with the radioactive isotope cesium-137 and others, which would lead to the pollution of the drinking water supply system for Kyiv and others cities downstream.[24] In Ukraine, the Dnieper estuary and the surrounding land are also included in the Emerald network, an area of special conservation interest.

Environmental issues plagued waterways across Europe throughout 2019. The extremely low water levels on the continent’s major rivers led to a substantial decrease in volumes of goods transported along European waterways. In the E40 region, the trend of low river levels was also seen in Poland. A graph released by the Institute of Meteorology and Water Management, National Research Institute (IMGW) showed a dramatic drop in water levels recorded on the Vistula River around Warsaw. In May 2019, the river was 579 centimeters deep; but by the end of July, the water level had sunk to just 40 cm.[25] By April 2020, the level at one spot in the capital was already 26 cm lower than on the same day in 2019.[26] Among various measures to be taken by the government in response to the crisis, Polish President Andrzej Duda announced that nine large storage reservoirs will be built. This year has also seen massive flooding in western Ukraine, the biggest since the 1970s. It is yet to be seen whether the evolving impact of global climate change will make this extraordinary event a regular local occurrence.

Though locally significant, the transit potential of Polish-Belarusian-Ukrainian inland waterways looks low when compared with other European waterways. The E40 route passes through the territory of only three countries, whereas, in comparison, the Danube flows through the territory of or is the border of ten states: Germany, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine and Moldova. Furthermore, as the E40 Waterway is not planned to be wide or deep enough for ocean-going container ships, the need for costly unloading and reloading onto river vessels could limit the route’s appeal to international shipping companies.

Critics have also targeted the initial feasibility study conducted on the E40. The EU’s Matti Maasikas labeled it “incomplete”[27] and argued that it does not take into account that the waterway will largely benefit carriers, which are private companies, leaving taxpayers with the burdens of financing the project and the cost of countering the environmental damage. A 2019 paper titled “Economic Assessment of Reconstruction Plans for the Inland Waterway E40” posits that investment costs for the Ukrainian part of the Dnieper River, excluding the reconstruction of bridges, are understated by almost €100 million ($114 million), and the cost of the reconstruction of the Belarusian section is underestimated by at least €0.9 billion ($1.02 billion).[28] Even with the total feasibility study estimate of €12,720 billion ($14.5 billion), the reconstruction and maintenance of inland waterways is costly, and investment in road and rail infrastructure is more popular and cost-effective.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has caused a global recession. According to the International Monetary Fund’s April 2020 World Economic Outlook, the projection for GDP growth in Belarus for the year is –6 percent, with a partial recovery in 2021 of 3.5 percent.[29] The global economy is projected to contract by 3 percent in 2020, far worse than during the 2008 financial crisis, likely hampering foreign investment in the E40 Waterway. For Belarus itself, the situation is made worse by the current debt burden on the Belarusian economy, and the economic crisis brought on by the aftermath of the August election. The Belarusian ruble rate has lost around 11 percent since mid-June 2020, when signs appeared that the presidential election could result in protests.[30] Russia’s decision to suspend its multi-billion-dollar credit support program to Belarus at the beginning of 2020 created an even larger challenge for Minsk, as it enters a peak of its public debt repayments. According to Belarus’s finance ministry, the country is due to repay around $3.4 billion of public debt, including interest, in 2020, and $3.2 billion in 2021.[31] In September 2020, Russia offered Belarus a $1.5 billion loan that Minsk will use, at least mostly if not entirely, to pay off its previous debt to Moscow. And even though Belarus raised $1.25 billion via a new Eurobond placement on the London Stock Exchange in June 2020, it is unlikely the government will have the funds to invest in infrastructure projects such as the E40 in the near future.

The political crisis leading up to and following the August 9, 2020, presidential election in Belarus could also make sourcing funds for the E40 more difficult. The aggressive crackdown on peaceful protesters, accusations of police torture, arrests of civil society figures, expulsions of opposition members, alongside the rising number of political prisoners, has led to calls for the EU to implement sanctions. This crackdown on post-election protests has left President Lukashenka in a much more precarious position both domestically and internationally and, therefore, more susceptible to Russian pressure to withdraw from the E40 if Russia senses the planned waterway to be against its interests.

Impact on Regional Cooperation: The Waterway as a Builder of Resilience and Trade  

The promotion of regional cooperation between Poland, Belarus and Ukraine is nothing new. After the fall of the Russian Empire following the First World War, Poland, Ukraine and Belarus rushed to form independent states. The interwar Polish leader Józef Piłsudski believed that an alliance of those states in a federal body could safeguard their respective sovereignties. The term Intermarium (from the Latin for “between the seas”) refers to this geopolitical concept of regional integration. The E40 would be based on cooperation rather than integration, but as a concept that encompasses a partnership of countries reaching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, the concepts share some likeness. Both sought/seek to weaken Russia’s regional influence and provide an alternative to the perceived centralized power of Western Europe. In order to assess the likelihood of constructive regional cooperation, a fundamental understanding of the current levels of cooperation is necessary.

Belarus and Poland

Prior to the political unrest in Belarus in the summer of 2020, Belarus and Poland experienced five years of gradually warming relations, and Warsaw had been playing an intermediary role between Minsk and the European Union. Belarus shares extensive historical and cultural heritage with Poland, and Russia’s frosty approach toward Belarus during this time had pushed the country closer to the EU and the West. One of Warsaw’s objectives in these relations was to prevent Belarus from finding itself in complete political and economic dependence on Russia, while Minsk was hoping to convert improved political relations with the West into financial support and increased trade.

The strengthening of Polish and Belarusian ties was seen most outright in the burgeoning trade relationship. In May 2020, the Polish ambassador to Belarus, Artur Michalski, stated that bilateral trade was now at more than $3 billion a year, up from $2.5 billion in 2018. [32] Poland is among the leading investors in the Belarusian economy, ranking fourth behind Russia, the United Kingdom and Cyprus.[33] Warsaw’s willingness to engage with Belarus was also based on geopolitical reasoning. The Belarusian defense ministry declared in late August 2019 that it was holding consultations on regional and international military cooperation with Poland.[34] This is particularly notable as Poland is NATO’s vanguard state in Central and Eastern Europe and the site of a new future US military base.

The disputed presidential election in August 2020 and the violent aftermath has undermined relations between Belarus and Poland, and dialogue between Belarus and the EU has collapsed. Indeed, Belarus’s relations with Poland are likely to be extremely strained for the foreseeable future. Poland remains the host of significant numbers of exiled members of the Belarusian opposition and funds opposition leaning media in Belarus. In June 2020 President Lukashenka accused Poland of being the “wire-pullers”, manipulating the current election campaign, adding that Belarus is “witnessing foreign interference in our election and domestic affairs.”[35] This rhetoric escalated following the election, with Lukashenka accusing NATO of  hostile activity in Poland and subsequently moving Belarusian forces to its western border. Lukashenka also accused Poland of seeking to reclaim former Polish territory from western Belarus and asserted that Polish flags were being hung in Grodno, a Belarusian city on the western border.[36]

Belarus and Ukraine 

For several years, Ukraine was the second-largest trading partner of Belarus. In 2012, trade achieved the highest level of $7.9 billion; but by 2015, economic exchange had declined to merely $3.5 billion due to a dispute involving mutual threats to introduce extra duties on each other’s goods. Eventually, both sides announced that they would abstain from any counter-sanctions. The situation is now improving and, in May 2020, the president of the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Gennadiy Chyzhykov, said that Belarus is again one of Ukraine’s top five trading partners and is Ukraine’s second biggest in the CIS. According to Ukrainian statistics, bilateral trade in 2019 totaled $5.5 billion, with Ukrainian exports to Belarus increasing by around 19 percent and reaching $1.7 billion. Supplies of Belarusian goods to the Ukrainian market also went up and came to almost $3.7 billion.[37]

In October 2019, the Second Forum of the Regions of Ukraine and Belarus was held in Zhytomyr with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and President Lukashenka. Zelenskyy stressed the importance of deep cooperation in relations, and the leaders signed commercial contracts worth around $500 million.[38] Lukashenka named cooperation in infrastructure as a priority in bilateral trade and economic relations. He specifically noted that transport arteries are important in the development of economic ties between the two countries. Minsk also presented itself as neutral ground for a negotiated solution to the conflict in eastern Ukraine and has resisted Russian attempts to enlist its support in the conflict. Belarus’s role as the broker of peace had boosted its international reputation.[39]

Overall relations between Ukraine and Belarus had been improving; however, as with Poland, the recent events in Belarus have damaged mutual ties. Before the election, Belarus arrested 32 Russian mercenaries, and Ukrainian authorities were infuriated when Lukashenka released them to Russia despite Kyiv’s request that they be extradited to Ukraine to be prosecuted for aiding Russia’s proxy rebel forces in Donbas. Relations deteriorated further when Ukraine recalled its ambassador, Ihor Kyzym, from Minsk following the election; upon Kyzym’s return to Belarus, the Ukrainian diplomat had his car searched at the Belarusian border, in violation of the Vienna Convention. Relations could potentially worsen going forward: Minsk’s current neutral position on the Ukrainian-Russian conflict might become untenable if Moscow is able to exert greater pressure on an internally weakened Lukashenka following his mismanaged presidential election.

Poland and Ukraine

Poland and Ukraine’s current relations stem from a mutual understanding of the security challenges in Europe’s East. While the two countries enjoy different strategic situations—Poland is a member of the EU and NATO and Ukraine is not—they both understand Russian revisionism as a considerable threat.

Trade between Poland and Ukraine is developing rapidly. In February 2019, Poland displaced Russia as the top buyer of Ukrainian goods, according to the latest data available from Ukrstat.[40] After Ukraine signed the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA) agreement with the European Union, Ukrainian trade with the bloc expanded to $9.5 billion, an increase of 10 percent. The EU now accounts for 38 percent of Ukraine’s foreign trade. Polish investments in the country are also gradually expanding, now close to $800 million. A large number of Ukrainians—an estimated two million—have found employment in Poland.[41]

A key issue in Polish-Ukrainian relations recently has been a historical dispute. It is centered around conflicting stances on the memorialization of the massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia, carried out in 1943–1944 by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which resulted in up to 100,000 Polish civilian casualties. Ukraine adopted laws in April 2015 that introduced the possibility of punishing those who denied the heroic nature of the Ukrainian fighters.[42] An amendment to a bill adopted by the Polish parliament in January 2018 introduced criminal responsibility for the denial of the crimes of Ukrainian nationalists in the years 1925–1950. These events cooled Polish-Ukrainian ties; however, in August 2019, President Zelenskyy and his Polish counterpart, President Duda, agreed to reopen a dialogue to resolve the issues.[43]

Funding the E40

The construction of the E40 will not come cheap, at $14.5 billion or more; yet there are several funding options potentially available. In Ukraine, the government is prepared to allocate 500 million hryvnia ($18.4 million) per year to construction along the route. This should be enough to complete the upgrades to the waterway within Ukraine.[44] Potential also exists for private investment, with companies from Turkey and the Netherlands expressing interest. The Polish segment of the E40, however, will require a much larger influx of funds, including from other forms of external financing.

The EU’s Role in European Connectivity Projects

The EU has made interconnectivity and the reduction of carbon emissions two core goals, and it plans to achieve these by prioritizing environmentally friendly transport modes and filling in the missing links in Europe’s transport infrastructure. In 2013, the EU embarked on a new era in transport policy and, in accordance with the TEN-T Regulation, aims to build a high-performance EU-wide transport infrastructure network, using the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) and other EU funding programs and initiatives.

The CEF is a key EU funding instrument for supporting the development of sustainable and efficiently interconnected trans-European networks in transport, energy and digital services. The level of CEF funding has been unprecedented, with a total financial envelope of more than €30 billion ($34 billion). Since the initiative began in 2014, Poland, one of the E40 partners, has been the highest recipient of funds with €4.7 billion ($5.36 billion), far higher than the next highest countries Denmark with €2.4 billion ($2.7 billion) and France with €2.3 billion ($2.6 billion).[45] Transport has received the greatest allocation of CEF funds—€22.8 billion ($26 billion) for 756 projects since 2014, compared with CEF Energy at €3.2 billion ($3.6 billion) and CEF Telecom at €0.3 billion ($342 million). CEF supports further project investment with European structural and investment funds, such as the Cohesion Fund as well as the European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI), and loans from the European Investment Bank (EIB).

CEF funding is largely allocated to sectors with environmentally friendly transport: more than 80 percent of the foreseen investments go to non-road transport modes. However, the predominant part of the CEF grants (72 percent) has been allocated to railway actions. The EU’s 2014–2019 CEF grants for Poland notably designated €3.5 billion ($3.8 billion) for railway projects and only €147.8 million ($161.2 million) for maritime infrastructure, demonstrating an overwhelming preference for rail investment.[46] In February 2020, when European Commissioner for Transport Adina-Ioana Vãlean spoke of the upcoming transport strategy, she stressed that she was planning to put forward measures to increase the share of more sustainable transport modes of both rail and inland waterways.[47]

The E40 is not yet included in TEN-T, which limits the project’s ability to access EU funding. But before the waterway can be included, it must plan to comply with Class IV shipping along the entire route—that is, allowing vessels with minimum dimensions of 80 meters by 9.5 meters. The Polish section would require a new canal in order to meet this requirement, thus putting the E40 at odds with the EU’s environmental concerns. While the E40 corresponds to the strategic objectives of the EU, such as lower carbon emissions and the development of environmentally friendly transport, the E40 is not yet an investment priority. It should be noted however, that the EU’s Cohesion Fund is contributing to construction work to increase capacity at the Port of Gdańsk in Poland, thus demonstrating that some segments of the waterway can receive EU funding.

The Eastern Partnership 

In January 2019, Johannes Hahn, then-Commissioner responsible for the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) and Enlargement Negotiations, wrote that in a bid to boost connectivity and economic growth in the Eastern Partnership countries, the European Commission and the World Bank co-authored an “Indicative trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) Investment Action Plan” and identified priority projects in the partner countries with an estimated investment of almost €13 billion ($14.8 billion).[48]

Belarus has so far received €1.2 billion ($1.4 billion) in investment for transport projects, including a Lithuania-Belarus road border crossing point costing €25 million ($28.5 million), and a road at the Polatsk border with Latvia costing €146 million ($166 million). The investment has been predominantly road based (€1,090 million, or $1.2 billion), followed by rail (€112 million, or $127.7 million), with no inland waterway investment so far. In Ukraine however, the level of funding has been much higher, reaching €4.4 billion ($5 billion), and this has included funding for inland waterway infrastructure development, such as locks on the Upper Dnieper costing €63 million ($72 million), investment of €35 million ($39 million) into Kherson Port, and €220 million ($251 million) for the implementation of dredging works at the Yuzhny seaport.[49]

In February 2018, Karmenu Vella, the former EU Commissioner for the Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries, said that the recent TEN-T Investment Action Plan for the EaP did not include the sections of the E40 Inland Waterway due to environmental and economic considerations. Vella added that the Polish component of the project, due to its character and scale, would have to be subject to an appropriate impact assessment on Natura 2000 and in conformity with the Water Framework Directive.[50] The EU’s Water Framework Direction was adopted in 2000 to protect and improve the quality of water environments, including waterways. The project could feasibly come under this funding, both in EU member state Poland, and EaP members Belarus and Ukraine. However, EU funding appears to be largely dependent on solving the environmental questions.

The Three Seas Initiative

An alternative source of funding could be the Three Seas Initiative (3SI). The Initiative is made up of 12 EU Member States located between the Baltic, Black and Adriatic seas: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia (the Czech Republic), Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. The core goal is to develop infrastructure for energy, transport and cyber connectivity along the north-south axis, as opposed to the predominant east-west direction of current infrastructure. The inherited infrastructure, largely built during the Cold War era, is perceived as a factor of the region’s geopolitical dependence on Russia, the main energy provider in the area, and a reinforcement of Germany’s economic dominance.[51] Whereas the countries of Western Europe are well linked by roads and railways, the states of Central and Eastern Europe remain comparatively disconnected from one another in terms of modern infrastructure. According to EU data, road and rail travel in the region takes, on average, roughly two to four times longer than comparable travel in the rest of the bloc.

At the 2018 summit, 3SI member countries developed a list of 48 priority interconnection projects and the transport projects included the completion of north-south road and railway corridors that would connect the Baltic with the Adriatic; a railway to connect the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea, via Lithuania, Belarus and Ukraine; and the FAIRway Danube, a project to improve the infrastructure and navigability of the Danube River in Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary and Slovakia.[52] It is clear that the E40 could fit within the priorities of the Three Seas Initiative. Ukraine is not a member, but President Zelenskyy showed interest in joining the 3SI during a meeting with Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid.[53] Ukrainian cooperation is also already taking place with regard to road infrastructure development: specifically, Ukraine is a full member of the Via Carpatia, a planned transnational highway network and one of the flagship projects of the Initiative. It is even more unlikely that that Belarus will ever become a 3SI member; but if Ukraine and Poland can use Three Seas investment for their respective sections of the E40, it could increase the likelihood of investment in the Belarusian segment as well.

After United States President Donald Trump attended the 3SI Summit in Warsaw in July 2017, the project gained more attention. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo’s announcement of a US contribution of $1 billion dollars in February 2020 sent a message that this region has Washington’s support and that it is worth investing here. This could become a driving force for more investments by private US firms. The European Commission (EC) has been officially supporting the project since the Bucharest Summit in 2018, which both the then–European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas attended.[54] Tension persists between Germany and many of the 3SI states predominantly over the Nord Stream Two natural gas pipeline project. Nord Stream Two is designed to deliver an additional 55 billion cubic meters of Russian gas per year directly to Germany via a Baltic Sea pipeline, which is largely opposed by the 3SI states. Yet German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier attended the June 2019 3SI summit, highlighting Berlin’s commitment to the initiative.[55] With US and EU backing, the 3SI has high potential to succeed. The grouping’s next summit is scheduled take place in October 2020, in Tallinn.

Members of the Three Seas Initiative, with the exception of Austria, are also members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and there is the possibility that NATO could one day take advantage of the E40. The waterway would not be wide or deep enough for warships, aircraft carriers or cruisers, but small-class NATO ships could potentially use the E40 to circumvent the limitations imposed by the 1936 Montreux Convention. The nearly century-old treaty governs maritime and naval passage through the Turkish Straits (the Bosporous and the Dardanelles) to the Black Sea. Poland, as a NATO member, and Ukraine, as one of the “Enhanced Opportunity Partners” under the Partnership Interoperability Initiative, could see this as an extra benefit to the construction of the waterway. In 2019, Belarus even flirted with the idea of joint military exercises with NATO, with Belarusian Defense Minister Oleg Belokonev saying that his country could resemble Serbia in NATO relations—having both close Russia ties and a military training connection to the North Atlantic Alliance.[56] However, for Belarus, this type of scenario would likely garner strong opposition from Russia, particularly regarding the movement of NATO ships across Belarusian territory. While at the moment this idea is purely theoretical, it is a notion worth keeping in mind and could potentially increase the likelihood of US investment.[57]

Chinese Investment

China is a player in the economic development of the E40 region, with investments in Poland, Belarus and Ukraine. The region is important to China as it constitutes a gateway to Europe for the overland Belt and Road corridors, and the E40 waterway would logically fall into China’s overall infrastructure development strategy. It is possible to find similarities with China’s region-specific 17+1 initiative and the 3SI, with many of the same local members and broadly overlapping development aims.

Despite Central and Eastern Europe fitting China’s main objectives of transportation networks for the Belt and Road Initiative, Chinese investments in the region represents a small percentage compared with the other EU countries. In 2017, 71 percent of Chinese investment in Europe went to the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. And even though that number dropped to 34 percent in 2019, only 3 percent that year went to Europe’s East.[58] China also decided not to officially include any of the EaP countries into the 17+1 format. Belarus did, however, receive observer status during the 2016 Riga summit, where Belarus’s prime minister joined the annual leaders’ conference and conducted a bilateral meeting with Chinese premier Li Keqiang.[59]

China appears to view Poland as a key partner in Europe when it comes to expanding freight trade through railway connections and logistical hubs. For example, a rail link between Łódź, in central Poland, and the Chinese city of Chengdu was initiated in 2013. In November 2019, Poland’s Port of Gdańsk received the inaugural Euro-China Train (ECT), connecting China directly with the Baltic Sea.

Ukraine has received less Chinese investment. But in 2018, a list of joint projects included investing $2 billion in a new metro line in Kyiv and $400 million in a passenger railway connecting Kyiv with Boryspil International Airport.[60]

For Belarus, the China Development Bank and the China ExIm Bank provided $3 billion in loans to develop the China-Belarus industrial park Great Stone.[61] And in December 2019, the Belarusian Ministry of Finance and the executive of the Shanghai branch of the China Development Bank signed an agreement that granted Belarus a loan of $500 million.[62] Between 2000 and 2014, Minsk received more than $7.6 billion in Chinese financial support in the form of aid and loans, but it is important to note that only $368 million of this was direct investment.

Beijing could potentially be a source of funding for the E40 Waterway as it would fit the general investment model of transport connectivity and infrastructure. Poland, under the EU-China Connectivity Platform, proposed the E40 for Chinese investment to develop the Middle and Lower Vistula.[63] However the amount of funding in the E40 region demonstrates it may not be a high priority for Chinese investment.

Conclusions

The E40 waterway still has many hurdles to overcome before it can become a reality. The key issues, before the recent political crisis in Belarus, were environmental concerns and questions about funding. The financing question could become less problematic if the environmental concerns are offset, but another obstacle is the economic viability of waterways in general. The Polish segment comes with large costs, and developers will need to provide sufficient incentives to shift investment from rail to inland waterways for the project to have any success. If the next feasibility study, due in late 2020, addresses the key environmental issues within the Polish segment of the E40, that could allow the potential for EU funding for the costliest portion of the waterway.

The many different players in the region have overlapping incentives for funding and constructing the waterway. For Belarus, it would allow access to the Black and Baltic seas, reduce economic dependency on Russia through trade ties with the EU and further afield, and likely give Minsk a stronger hand in negotiations with Moscow. For Poland, it would provide access to the Black Sea and encourage further development of its regions and the Port of Gdańsk. For Ukraine, the E40 would reinforce economic resilience, develop infrastructure and further cement the country’s Western lean. For the EU, the project could help secure its eastern border and lead to greater regional cooperation with and within the EaP. The Three Seas Initiative, with the US as a partner, is seeking regional development and security, particularly on the EU-NATO’s eastern border. Chinese investment could come in the form of Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure development, adding an extra trade corridor to the region. In June 2019, Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei stressed the prospect for implementing tripartite projects in the format of “China-EaP-EU countries” for the efficient interconnection of the “Great Silk Road and the EU-TEN-T transport network,”[64] further demonstrating the potential for the E40 to find funding partners across different initiatives.

Cooperation between Belarus, Ukraine and Poland was burgeoning until very recently, and the partners could retain that solid foundation in regional relations once the political crisis in Belarus is settled. Particularly now, as the wider region seeks to recover from the COVID-19 crisis, an initiative that develops infrastructure and generates growth and jobs could be urgently needed. With these overlapping incentives, it should be possible to attract different branches of funding and support. The recent unrest in Belarus, however, has resulted in the country, at least momentarily, turning sharply eastward toward Russia, likely reducing the incentive and ability to invest in Western regional projects in the short-term; and any forthcoming EU/US sanctions will make funding the waterway more difficult. Nevertheless, the situation in Belarus is changing rapidly, and the future foreign policy outlook of the country, be that facing eastward, westward or something more neutral, has yet to be decided. The second feasibility study on the E40, expected later this year, should provide answers to some of the most crucial outstanding issues and possibly open the door to the project’s final implementation.

 

Notes


[1] Guidance document on inland waterway transport and Natura 2000, European Commission, 2018, https://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/natura2000/management/docs/iwt_en.pdf.

[2] “Ukraine and Belarus agree on dredging internal waterways,” Dredging and Port Construction, November 4, 2019, https://dredgingandports.com/news/2019/ukraine-and-belarus-agree-on-dredging-internal-waterways/; “Belarus and Turkish investor plan to build river port on border with Ukraine for access to Black Sea,” UkrAgroConsult, November 2018, http://www.blackseagrain.net/novosti/belarus-and-turkish-investor-plan-to-build-river-port-on-border-with-ukraine-for-access-to-black-sea.

[3] “Belarus, Turkey discussing freight transportation along Dnieper River,” Export.by, August 9, 2018, https://export.by/en/news/belarus-turkey-discussing-freight-transportation-along-dnieper-river.

[4] “Lukashenka Unveils Belarus-Ukraine Cooperation Priorities,” BelTA, October 4, 2019, https://eng.belta.by/president/view/lukashenko-unveils-belarus-ukraine-cooperation-priorities-124746-2019/.

[5] “In the first quarter of 2020, the dredging volume by own fleet of USPA reached 7000 thousand cubic meters,” USPA, April 10, 2020, http://www.uspa.gov.ua/en/press-center/news/uspa-news/17544-in-the-first-quarter-of-2020-the-dredging-volume-by-own-fleet-of-uspa-reached-700-thousand-cubic-meters.

[6] “Agreement for the preparation of a feasibility study for the development of the Wisla River Waterway signed,” Port Gdańsk, July 3, 2018, http://www.portgdansk.pl/events/feasibility-study-for-the-development-of-the-wisla-river-waterway.

[7] Cezary Gołębiowski, Inland Water Transport in Poland, Transportation Research Procedia, Vol. 14, 2016, pp. 223–232, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352146516300588.

[8] “Novi Pyut iz varyiag v greki: Yukraina ydarit po Rossie, soediniv Baltickoe i Chernoe moria,” Svobodnaya Pressa, September 15, 2019, https://svpressa.ru/war21/article/243718/.

[9] Lawrence C. Allin, The Integrated Inland Waterways of the U.S.S.R., Naval War College Review, Vol. 34, No. 3, May–June 1981, pp. 88–96, https://www.jstor.org/stable/44642160?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents.

[10] European Agreement on Main Inland Waterways of International Importance, Geneva, January 1996, https://treaties.un.org/pages/ViewDetails.aspx?src=TREATY&mtdsg_no=XI-D-5&chapter=11&clang=_en.

[11] “Restoration of Inland Waterway E40 Dnieper-Vistula: from Strategy to Planning,” Final Feasibility Study Report, December 2015, http://czech.mfa.gov.by/docs/e40restoration_feasibility_study_en.pdf.

[12] “Inland waterways – statistics on container transport,” Eurostat, December 2018, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Inland_waterways_-_statistics_on_container_transport.

[13] “Inland waterways freight transport – quarterly and annual data,” Eurostat, November 2019, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Inland_waterways_freight_transport_-_quarterly_and_annual_data#Inland_waterways_freight_transport_performance_dropped_by_8.3_.25_in_2018_compared_with_2017.

[14] “2020 Annual Report: Inland navigation in Europe,” September 2020, https://inland-navigation-market.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/CCNR_annual_report_EN_2020_BD.pdf.

[15] “Restoration of Inland Waterway E40,” Final Feasibility Study Report.

[16] “Economic Assessment of Reconstruction Plans for the Inland Waterway E40,” February 2019, https://bahna.land/files/5d281e5a2a5d42397bc41dc8.pdf.

[17] “First Baltic Direct Belt & Road Train Reaches Poland’s Gdansk Port,” Silk Road Briefing, November 26, 2019, https://www.silkroadbriefing.com/news/2019/11/26/first-baltic-direct-belt-road-train-reaches-polands-gdansk-port/.

[18] “In 2019 Ukraine sea ports handled more than 1 million TEU containers,” USPA, January 3, 2020, http://www.uspa.gov.ua/en/press-center/news/uspa-news/17403-in-2019-ukrainian-sea-ports-handled-more-than-1-million-teu-containers.

[19] “Restoration of Inland Waterway E40,” Final Feasibility Study Report.

[20] Ibid.

[21] “Redrawing the geopolitical map: Belarus and its neighbours connect the Black and Baltic seas,” Belarus Digest, August 7, 2017, https://belarusdigest.com/story/redrawing-the-geopolitical-map-belarus-and-its-neighbours-connect-the-black-and-baltic-seas/.

[22] “Plans to create 1,000 jobs in free economic zone Brest in 2020,” BELTA, February 18, 2020, https://eng.belta.by/economics/view/plans-to-create-1000-jobs-in-free-economic-zone-brest-in-2020-128273-2020/.

[23] “Guidance document on Inland waterway transport and Natura 2000,” European Commission, 2018, https://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/natura2000/management/docs/iwt_en.pdf.

[24] Statement “To stop the ecologically and economically inexpedient project of the continental waterway E-40 Gdańsk – Kherson,” Matti Maaskias, Head of the EU Delegration to Ukraine,” September 2019, https://necu.org.ua/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/%D0%94%D0%B5%D0%BA%D0%BB_%D0%9540_%D0%94%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%B3%D0%B0%D1%86%D1%96%D1%8F_%D0%84%D0%A1_Eng.pdf.

[25] “Minister comes up with plan to save water as river levels drop,” The First News, August 4, 2019, https://www.thefirstnews.com/article/minister-comes-up-with-plan-to-save-water-as-river-levels-drop-7016.

[26] “Polish cities pumping water from swimming pools to fight shortages amid record drought,” Notes from Poland, May 8, 2020, https://notesfrompoland.com/2020/05/08/polish-cities-pumping-water-from-swimming-pools-to-fight-shortages-amid-record-drought/.

[27] Statement “To stop the ecologically and economically inexpedient,” Matti Maaskias.

[28] “Economic Assessment of Reconstruction Plans for the Inland Waterway E40,” February 2019, https://bahna.land/files/5d281e5a2a5d42397bc41dc8.pdf.

[29] “World Economic Outlook: The Great Lockdown,” International Monetary Fund, April 14, 2020, https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2020/04/14/weo-april-2020 .

[30] Todd Prince, “A Political Crisis Has Gripped Belarus. Is An Economic Crisis Next?”, RFERL, August 29, 20202, https://www.rferl.org/a/30810092.html.

[31] “Belarus faces limits in its hunt for EU and IMF money,” Obserwator Finansowy, July 2, 2020, https://www.obserwatorfinansowy.pl/in-english/belarus-faces-limits-in-its-hunt-for-eu-and-imf-money/.

[32] “Ambassador: Belarus-Poland annual trade exceeds $3bn,” BelTA, May 4, 2020, https://eng.belta.by/economics/view/ambassador-belarus-poland-annual-trade-exceeds-3bn-130148-2020/; “Belarus-Poland trade hits 8-year high in 2018,” Belarus.by, March 26, 2019, https://www.belarus.by/en/business/business-news/belarus-poland-trade-hits-8-year-high-in-2018_i_0000095126.html.

[33] “Belarus, Poland can gain more benefits from neighbourhood,” BelTA, December 11, 2019, https://eng.belta.by/economics/view/belarus-poland-can-gain-more-benefits-from-neighborhood-126602-2019/.

[34] Andrew Korybko, “The New Viking Silk Road: The E-40 Waterway Project Linking the Baltic to the Black Sea,” Global Research, September 13, 2018, https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-new-viking-silk-road-the-e-40-waterway-project-linking-the-baltic-to-the-black-sea/5653944.

[35] “Lukashenka slams foreign interference in Belarus election, domestic affairs,” BelTA, June 25, 2020, https://eng.belta.by/president/view/lukashenko-slams-foreign-interference-in-belarus-election-domestic-affairs-131286-2020/.

[36] Ivan Nechepurenko and Anton Troianovski, “In Belarus Town, People Tasted a Bite of Freedom. It Lasted 2 Days,” The New York Times, August 21, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/21/world/europe/grodno-belarus-protests.html.

[37] “Belarus among Ukraine top five trading partners,” BelTA, May 27, 2020, https://eng.belta.by/economics/view/belarus-among-ukraines-top-five-trading-partners-130679-2020/#:~:text=According%20to%20Ukrainian%20statistics%2C%20Belarus,billion%2C%E2%80%9D%20Gennadiy%20Chyzhykov%20noted.

[38] “Trade turnover between Ukraine and Belarus to exceed $6 billion,” President of Ukraine Official Website, October 4, 2019, https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/tovaroobig-mizh-ukrayinoyu-ta-bilorussyu-maye-perevishiti-6-57617.

[39] Grigory Ioffe, “Belarus and Ukraine Face Strained Relations,” Eurasia Daily Monitor, The Jamestown Foundation, November 30, 2016, https://jamestown.org/program/belarus-ukraine-face-strained-relations/.

[40] “Poland overtakes Russia to become Ukraine’s biggest trade partner in February,” bne IntelliNews, May 12, 2019, https://www.intellinews.com/poland-overtakes-russia-to-become-ukraine-s-biggest-trade-partner-in-february-161024/.

[41] Piotr Kościński, “Poland and Ukraine: History Divides,” The Warsaw Institute Review, March 1, 2018, https://warsawinstitute.org/poland-ukraine-history-divides/.

[42] Wojciech Kononczuk, “The Paradoxes of Polish-Ukrainian Relations, Focus Ukraine,” The Kennan Institute, May 23, 2018, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/the-paradoxes-polish-ukrainian-relations.

[43] “Ukraine and Poland agreed to update and restart the bilateral working group on historical issues – Volodymyr Zelenskyy,” President of Ukraine Official Website, August 31, 2019, https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/ukrayina-ta-polsha-domovilis-onoviti-j-perezavantazhiti-dvos-57029.

[44] Alla Hurska, “The E40 Waterway: Economic and Geopolitical Implications for Ukraine and the Wider Region,” Eurasia Daily Monitor, The Jamestown Foundation, May 13, 2020, https://jamestown.org/program/the-e40-waterway-economic-and-geopolitical-implications-for-ukraine-and-the-wider-region/.

[45] “The Connecting Europe Facility, Five Years supporting European infrastructure,” European Commission, July 2019, https://ec.europa.eu/inea/sites/inea/files/cefpub/cef_implementation_brochure_web_final.pdf.

[46] “Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) – Transport grants 2014 – 2020, Poland,” European Commissionhttps://ec.europa.eu/inea/sites/inea/files/cefpub/eu_investment_in_transport_in_poland.pdf.

[47] “Commissioner Valean’s Speech: EU strategy for mobility and transport: measures needed by 2030 and beyond,” European Commission, February 3, 2020, https://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes/strategies/news/2020-02-03-commissioner-valeans-speech-eu-strategy-mobility-and-transport_en.

[48] “Eastern Partnership: new Indicative TEN-T Investment Action Plan for stronger connectivity,” European Commission, January 2019, https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/news_corner/news/eastern-partnership-new-indicative-ten-t-investment-action-plan-stronger_en.

[49] “Indicative TEN-T Investment Action Plan,” European Commission, December 2018, https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/sites/near/files/ten-t_iap_web-dec13.pdf.

[50] “Answer by Mr Vella on behalf of the European Commission, Parliamentary Question,” European Parliament, February 18, 2019, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-8-2018-006186-ASW_EN.html.

[51] Thomann, Pierre-Emmanuel, “The Three Seas Initiative, a New Project at the Heart of European and Global Geopolitical Rivalries,” Yearbook of the Institute of East-Central Europe, Vol, 17, No. 3, 2019, pp. 31–63, https://ies.lublin.pl/pub/2020-01/RIESW_2019-3-03.pdf.

[52] “The Three Seas Initiative,” Congressional Research Service, May 2020, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IF11547.pdf.

[53] “President: Ukraine is interested in joining the Three Seas Initiative,” President of Ukraine Official Website, November 26, 2019, https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/ukrayina-zacikavlena-v-tomu-shob-doluchitisya-do-iniciativi-58561.

[54] David A. Wemer, “The Three Seas Initiative explained,” Atlantic Council, February 11, 2019, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/the-three-seas-initiative-explained-2/.

[55] “Speech by State Secretary Andreas Michaelis at the Summit of the Three Seas Initiative,” German Federal Foreign Office website, June 6, 2019, https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/en/newsroom/news/michaelis-3-seas-initiative/2227006.

[56] “Belarus and NATO in talks on join military drills,” LRT, January 6, 2020, https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/1130759/belarus-and-nato-in-talks-on-joint-military-drills.

[57] “Novi Pyut iz varyiag v greki: Yukraina ydarit po Rossie, soediniv Baltickoe i Chernoe moria” [“A New Way from the Varangians to the Greeks: Ukraine will hit Russia with the connection of the Baltic and Black Seas”], Svobodniya Pressa, September 15, 2019, https://svpressa.ru/war21/article/243718/.

[58] David Hutt and Richard Q. Turcsányi, “No, China Has Not Bought Central and Eastern Europe,” Foreign Policy, May 27, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/27/china-has-not-bought-central-eastern-europe/.

[59] Marcin Kaczmarski, Jakub Jakbóbowski and Szymon Kardaś, “The effects of China’s economic expansion on Eastern Partnership countries,” EU-STRAT, No. 17, March 2019, http://eu-strat.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/EU-STRAT-Working-Paper-No.-17.pdf.

[60] Andrey Buzarov, “Ukraine and China: Seeking Economic Opportunity within a Framework of Risk,” Focus Ukraine, Kennan Institute, February 21, 2018, https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/ukraine-and-china-seeking-economic-opportunity-within-framework-risk.

[61] Andrei Yeliseyeu, “China Fails to Deliver on its Promises in Belarus,” China Observers, July 31, 2020, https://chinaobservers.eu/china-fails-to-deliver-on-its-promises-in-belarus/.

[62] Adrian Brona, “The Curious Timing of the Chinese Loan to Belarus,” China Observers, January 17, 2020, https://chinaobservers.eu/the-curious-timing-of-chinese-loan-to-belarus/.

[63] “Research for TRAN Committee: The new Silk Route – opportunities and challenges for EU transport,” European Parliament, 2018, https://globalshippersalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Study_EP_IPOL_STU2018585907_EN.pdf.

[64] “Minister of Foreign Affairs of Belarus V. Makei participates in an expert seminar ‘Eastern Partnership at 10: Results and ways forward,’ ” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Belarus, June 4, 2019, http://mfa.gov.by/en/press/news_mfa/b51421e95a1d030e.html.