MOSCOW, December 22. /TASS/. The economic power centers globally are shifting from the West to the East where countries friendly to Russia are located, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexey Overchuk told the Rossiya-24 TV channel on Thursday, adding that Moscow and the EAEU (Eurasian Economic Union) should cultivate transportation ties with them.

"The economic power centers, as they are called, are moving from the West to the East and the economies of the global South in particular, such as India and China, will be developing, while Pakistan and Africa are starting to develop. Those all are emerging markets and fundamentally, those are markets where countries friendly to us are located. And of course, we should develop transport and logistic ties that will connect Russia and the EAEU to those countries, given the new realities," he said.

The logistic potential between Russia and the West has diminished considerably by now, though Moscow is undertaking endeavors on such projects like the North-South transport corridor to build up the eastern logistic routes, Overchuk added. "We are creating the so-called North-South corridor. Basically, it has always existed, from the times of Afanasy Nikitin, but today we are making it modern and convenient. <…> We are planning the reconstruction of the railway, in fact, the construction of 160 missing kilometers between the border of Azerbaijan and the Iranian city of Rasht. With the construction finished, the so-called western corridor or the western route of the North-South corridor will be a full-fledged railway, and we will have rail access to the Iranian ports of the Persian Gulf," the official explained.