Murmansk on the Atlantic, and ports on the Black Sea and Pacific. What Russia lacks is multiple ports on the world ocean with access to open water that is not controlled by a potential enemy, like Turkey, Norway and Japan AND close to its industrial and agricultural heartland. Until WWII, central Asia was adjacent only to some of the more remote and unsettled parts of the Soviet Empire.
The interpretation of Russian diplomacy as a single-minded search for ice-free ports has some truth to it, but its importance has been greatly exagerrated because of the role it played in the 19th century geopolitical theories of Mahan and Mackinder. In those days, coaling stations for the fleet were of supreme importance for the English and Americans, so they assumed everyone else was obsessed by them too.
Afghanistan has no coastline and Russia has no border with Pakistan, and as far as I know, it never had much in the way of diplomatic relations with it, either. It's interest in Iran goes way back to before the first world war, but it was oil, not ports, that drove that.
Besides, before long, Russia will have all the year-round, ice-free ports it needs: on the Arctic Ocean.
Current Events » in reply to re: There may be a positive side to all this.
Russia has ice-free ports
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