Since 2008, the International Transport Forum has been hosted in Leipzig every year in May, and there have been few exceptions when the situation was not dire in any sense. However, the 2026 ITF held under the Azerbaijani presidency and featuring an exclusive session on the Middle Corridor had an exceptional degree of concentration on it. The Strait of Hormuz has been blocked by the naval confrontation between Iran and the United States of America for three months now. The Red Sea remains unsafe due to the Houthis' missile strikes, forcing ships to take a detour along the African coast, thus adding two to three extra weeks and extra costs to sea traffic from Asia to Europe. Finally, the Northern Corridor through Russia has become inaccessible because of the sanctions imposed on Russia since 2022. No alternatives left for the Middle Corridor function are free from restrictions, either. In other words, the more than 1,200 attendees from 80 countries who arrived in Leipzig this week to discuss transport infrastructure could speak to something real.

Such a coincidence did not go unnoticed by Azerbaijani Transport Minister Rashad Nabiyev, who represented his nation as the president of the ITF for 2025–26, the first time for Baku to chair what is, uniquely in the world, the sole international governmental organization for transport policy. "Resilience is not only an engineering question, but........

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