Ashgabat, the Caspian port of Turkmenbashi, and the ancient Silk Road city of Merv/Mary are not in restricted areas.

The ports of Freydoonkenar and Babolsar are both located on the southern coast of the Mazandaran Sea with connection to other Caspian ports.

Iran has swap arrangements with Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan, under which it ships crude from the Central Asian producers to its Caspian ports.

Its mandate was to ship crude oil and oil products, primarily coming from the Baku oil fields, from the Caspian port of Astrakhan to Russia's industrial centers along the Volga and Kama.

In his memoirs, Soviet Transcaucasian Front commander Ivan Tiulenev recounts how thousands of civilians attempted to flee from Ukraine to the comparatively safe Caspian ports, such as Makhachkala and Baku.

The study will also examine whether Kazakhstan's only Caspian port, Aktau, can handle heavy tanker traffic.

In May 1920 the Soviet Navy led by Raskolnikov and accompanied by Sergo Ordzhonikidze entered the Caspian port of Anzali.

They planned to sail to Astrakhan, the only Caspian port still in Bolshevik hands but were instead dumped at the port of Krasnovodsk where they were summarily executed by the local Menshevik garrison.

Dagestan commands 70 percent of Russia's shoreline to the oil-producing Caspian Sea and its only all-weather Caspian port at Makhachkala.

Two major pipelines bisected the region in an immense V whose apex was the Caspian port of Baku and whose long arms stretched northeast toward the Baltic and southwest toward Istanbul.