Russia’s pivot to the East, prevalent through increased economic ties to China, solidifies the geopolitical theory that the world’s economic center of gravity is reverting back to Asia. Both India and China have considered establishing more direct trade routes and investing in the Russian Far East. Meanwhile, trade with the West has slowed. Backed by China, Russia’s patrol of the Arctic signals the development of a sea route across the Artic Sea, circumventing the Suez Canal and connecting Asian and Western ports.
It is unlikely the West would benefit from this until a peace deal is met in Ukraine. Russia could also benefit from the effects of climate change, becoming a global leader in renewable energy and boosting its economy. Despite the country’s increased ties to North Korea, Asian countries are more welcoming of Russia than those in the West, giving Russia the potential for more strategic ties.
The Red Cell Project
The Red Cell series is published in collaboration with The National Interest. Drawing upon the legacy of the CIA’s Red Cell—established following the September 11 attacks to avoid similar analytic failures in the future—the project works to challenge assumptions, misperceptions, and groupthink with a view to encouraging alternative approaches to America’s foreign and national security policy challenges.
Most forecasts of Russia’s Future project more of the same, only with darker hues: Russia is caught in endless conflict with the West or absorbed by China. However, Russia has other options created by the shift in economic power to Asia; curtailment of Western ties owing to the Ukraine War; climate change and the opening of the Arctic; and its renewables potential. Publics and governments in Asia and the Global South also welcome a stronger Russia. Its former Cold War superpower status will never return, but with new sources of power and resilience, along with its nuclear great power status, Russia could continue to play an outsized role in global politics. Just as the sociopolitical tectonic plates are shifting in America, “green shoots” are sprouting that might augur a different Russia, which many currently ignore.
Pivot to the East
Despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s obsession with Ukraine and NATO, the Russian President clings to a longstanding belief in the country’s Eurasian destiny. According to Canadian scholar Paul Robinson, “from the second half of the 19th century, Russian artists and intellectuals increasingly stressed the Asian roots of much of Russian culture. The recourse in Russian conservative thought has been particularly strong when ties with Western Europe came under pressure.”1Paul Robinson, Russian Conservatism, (Ithaca, NY: Northern Illinois University Press, 2019).
Russia’s eastern pivot predates the two Ukrainian wars. Putin embraced Yeltsin’s efforts to settle age-old boundary disputes and rebuild ties with China, announcing Russia’s pivot to the East during his 2012 presidential campaign — two years before the invasion of Crimea. Initially dismissed by Western commentators, the growing tilt proved to be Russia’s salvation from the full onslaught of Western sanctions. More than just geopolitics, Russia’s shift is seen in Moscow as having an economic logic, with the world’s center of economic gravity reverting to Asia, near where it was in 1000 A.D.
Increasing Ties to China in the Near Term
Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014, Putin obtained a $400-billion deal for the Russian oil and gas company Gazprom with China National Petroleum Corporation, the biggest natural gas deal for Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin called the agreement an “epochal event” solidifying Russia-China ties.
Beijing has yet to approve a second power of Siberia gas pipeline that would compensate for the loss of exported natural gas to Europe. But two-way trade has exploded since 2022. Trade with China has become Russia’s main lifeline. China-Russia dollar-denominated trade hit $240.1 billion in 2023, growing 26.3% from a year earlier. Furthermore, shipments to Russia jumped 46.9% in 2023 from a year earlier and soared 64.2% compared with 2021 before the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine War. In 2023, Russia exported half of its oil and petroleum products to China, though more recently, India has taken a majority share. Chinese automakers are taking over Russian markets, especially with the exodus of European car companies.
Russian elites worry about Moscow’s dependence on Beijing, distrustful of a China still economically reliant on Western consumers and unprepared to break its ties. For the next decade, if not longer, Russians have few options to their reliance on China, even if they build a bigger sphere of activity outside China in the Global South. Nevertheless, with planned and existing networks of rail and energy pipelines and the Northern Sea Route (NSR), Moscow is laying the foundations for a resurgence that brings more balance to its relations with China.
Transport and Trade Links
With Russia’s European trade practically stopped, its Asian ports are humming with activity, requiring more transport links to Russia’s western population centers. The carrying capacity of its rail networks spanning Siberia has reached 180 million tons in late 2024, an increase of 36 million since 2021, that Moscow plans to boost to 270 million tons by 2032. However, a report last year indicated that because of sanctions, the Ukraine war and record interest rates, Russian Railways, the operator for the rail network, has been forced to make deep cuts in the investment plans, compromising the goals set for its expansion. Regardless, China and Russia are building direct transport links to facilitate their growing mutual trade.
India is also exploring more transit links with Russia, but New Delhi is currently less invested than China. Moscow and New Delhi started work on the Vladivostok-Chennai Eastern Maritime Corridor, which will include connections to Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia. Indian Prime Minister Modi and Putin have signed a program of India-Russia cooperation on trade, economic links, and investment in the Russian Far East for 2024-2029. Another plan is the North–South Corridor, a railway route connecting Russia to the Indian Ocean via Iran.
Northern Sea Route
Development of a 5,600 kilometer-long sea route across the Arctic Ocean would shorten by almost half the current journey via the Suez Canal for Asian goods headed to Western ports. The route is navigable during the summer months. Only after a Ukraine peace could the route become a major artery that Western shippers would use.
Currently, the sea route is being used for the exploitation and transport of energy and minerals, which are abundant. The region has an estimated 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30% of undiscovered natural gas. Most of the commercial traffic has been “LNG [liquid natural gas] heading from Russian facilities to Japan and China in specialist vessels,” along with oil in sanctioned cargo ships. In 2024, there was a “record volume for [such] transit cargo through the NSR from northwestern Russia through the Bering Strait to Asia.”
The Arctic’s Growing Geopolitical Importance
The GIUK gap, a key naval chokepoint between Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom, has seen increased Russian submarine patrols and exercises. Russia has for years prioritized an expanded presence in the Arctic through airfield renovation, the addition of bases, troop training, and the development of a network of military defense systems on the northern border. China is increasingly cooperating. In October 2024, the Chinese Coast Guard and the Russian Border Guard, for example, undertook their first joint patrol in the Arctic. China and Russia are now seen as having “comprehensive” Arctic cooperation in resources, shipping, scientific research and military drills.
Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping are both fascinated by the new Arctic route, representing for Putin “man conquering nature” a defining feature of Russian nationalism. For Xi, it is one maritime artery that is not presently controlled by the U.S. fleet.
Reaping Benefits From Climate Change
Moscow and much of Russia west of the Urals could see notable temperature increases by midcentury, but this is not expected to be accompanied by substantial decreases in rainfall or drought. Nevertheless, permafrost could melt, and methane could be released into the Earth’s atmosphere.
Warming temperatures are expected to increase economic output in Russia by boosting agricultural yields as well as arable land. A study recently published in the journal Nature estimated that in a “middle of the road” climate change scenario, income per capita in Northwestern Russia will increase by 20% due to increased temperatures. This finding is consistent with earlier studies, such as a 2017 analysis by the International Monetary Fund, which estimates that parts of Russia could see a several percentage-point increase in economic output per capita with each 1-degree Celsius increase.
Russia’s Renewables Potential
The International Energy Agency estimated in 2003 that the amount of renewable energy that is economically recoverable is equivalent to more than 270 million tons of coal annually. More recent analysis indicates Russia has the largest technical potential for renewable energy in the world and could be a major clean energy exporter. Russia is rich in numerous renewables: wind, hydro, geothermal, biomass, hydrogen, and solar energy, but their share in Russian energy consumption is very low.
As most countries begin to transition away from fossils fuels, a post-Putin leadership might seize the opportunity to accelerate the development of renewables. But there are impediments. Russia’s “decarbonization strategy lacks a countrywide carbon pricing system or other means to penalize emissions.” With a small domestic market and a gradual ban on cheaper Chinese inputs to preserve its technological sovereignty, Russia’s manufacturing capacity on renewables will struggle. While wedded to achieving net-zero carbon, Russia is relying on a twofold increase in natural carbon sinks in forests instead of renewables. (Natural carbon sinks – such as oceans and the Amazon Rain Forest – extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and absorb more carbon than they release.) It also wants technological sovereignty, which means mandatory local content requirements. With such a small domestic market and a gradual ban on cheaper Chinese inputs, Russia’s manufacturing capacity on renewables will struggle.
Moreover, renewable exports will only partially offset the loss of revenues from fossil fuel exports, as renewable costs decline and renewable production in nontraditional energy producers lessens global demand. An Asian energy grid, which Moscow proposed in the early 2000s, could be an outlet for Russia’s excess energy production, uniting the power plants of eastern Russia, China, Mongolia, South Korea, and Japan. Plans for a grid have stalled, but Japan’s SoftBank, a potential big investor, is not giving up on the idea.
Russia is very competitive in nuclear energy and “despite sanctions on its economy, Russia continues to be an unrivalled exporter of nuclear power plants.” More than a third of the new reactors are being constructed with Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy corporation’s, Rosatom’s, help.
A More Welcoming Environment Than in the West
The Indians stand out on overall favorability of Russia, with a majority viewing Russia as an ally in a 2025 European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) survey. Indians see Russia as a counterbalance to China. Indeed, Putin engineered a Modi-Xi meeting at the 2024 BRICS Summit in Kazan leading to a reduction of Sino-Indian tensions. Modi visited Russia twice in 2024, and Putin is scheduled to visit New Delhi in 2025.
Other Asian countries exhibit a remarkably strong acceptance of Russia as a partner despite the brutal neocolonial war in Ukraine. Most Chinese view Russia as an ally, according to a January 2023 ECFR poll. Understandably, Japan, South Korea, and Australia — like their European counterparts — dislike Russia, according to a 2024 Pew poll, but most other populations in South and Southeast Asia view Russia favorably.
Russia’s strengthening ties with North Korea also increases its importance in Asia. The June 2024 treaty signed by both countries “provides a means [for Russia] to exert influence in East Asia and counterbalance the pressures from the West.” China does not like the fact that Moscow has brought North Korea out of isolation.
New Leadership and An Easing of East-West Tensions
Potential is one thing, achievement is another. Without peace, the young, educated, and skilled Russians who left at the offset of Ukraine war may not return in sufficient numbers to renew Russia’s former tech excellence. Continuing hostilities with the West and a growing defense budget will also drain resources for any Russian transformation. The gains, however, could be significant with a new Russia pivoted to the East and reaping economic opportunities from climate change and a more favorable geopolitical environment. Quantitative analysis that we have undertaken and comparison with two other scenarios show the favorable gains that Russia could reap in labor and total factor productivity with growing influence in the Global South. Success in developing a normative relationship with the US and West would reopen the door to international finance and technology. A new Russia will probably remain ambivalent about the West and still pose challenges.
Notes
- 1Paul Robinson, Russian Conservatism, (Ithaca, NY: Northern Illinois University Press, 2019).
Russia’s pivot to the East, prevalent through increased economic ties to China, solidifies the geopolitical theory that the world’s economic center of gravity is reverting back to Asia. Both India and China have considered establishing more direct trade routes and investing in the Russian Far East. Meanwhile, trade with the West has slowed. Backed by China, Russia’s patrol of the Arctic signals the development of a sea route across the Artic Sea, circumventing the Suez Canal and connecting Asian and Western ports.
It is unlikely the West would benefit from this until a peace deal is met in Ukraine. Russia could also benefit from the effects of climate change, becoming a global leader in renewable energy and boosting its economy. Despite the country’s increased ties to North Korea, Asian countries are more welcoming of Russia than those in the West, giving Russia the potential for more strategic ties.
The Red Cell Project
The Red Cell series is published in collaboration with The National Interest. Drawing upon the legacy of the CIA’s Red Cell—established following the September 11 attacks to avoid similar analytic failures in the future—the project works to challenge assumptions, misperceptions, and groupthink with a view to encouraging alternative approaches to America’s foreign and national security policy challenges.
Most forecasts of Russia’s Future project more of the same, only with darker hues: Russia is caught in endless conflict with the West or absorbed by China. However, Russia has other options created by the shift in economic power to Asia; curtailment of Western ties owing to the Ukraine War; climate change and the opening of the Arctic; and its renewables potential. Publics and governments in Asia and the Global South also welcome a stronger Russia. Its former Cold War superpower status will never return, but with new sources of power and resilience, along with its nuclear great power status, Russia could continue to play an outsized role in global politics. Just as the sociopolitical tectonic plates are shifting in America, “green shoots” are sprouting that might augur a different Russia, which many currently ignore.
Pivot to the East
Despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s obsession with Ukraine and NATO, the Russian President clings to a longstanding belief in the country’s Eurasian destiny. According to Canadian scholar Paul Robinson, “from the second half of the 19th century, Russian artists and intellectuals increasingly stressed the Asian roots of much of Russian culture. The recourse in Russian conservative thought has been particularly strong when ties with Western Europe came under pressure.”1Paul Robinson, Russian Conservatism, (Ithaca, NY: Northern Illinois University Press, 2019).
Russia’s eastern pivot predates the two Ukrainian wars. Putin embraced Yeltsin’s efforts to settle age-old boundary disputes and rebuild ties with China, announcing Russia’s pivot to the East during his 2012 presidential campaign — two years before the invasion of Crimea. Initially dismissed by Western commentators, the growing tilt proved to be Russia’s salvation from the full onslaught of Western sanctions. More than just geopolitics, Russia’s shift is seen in Moscow as having an economic logic, with the world’s center of economic gravity reverting to Asia, near where it was in 1000 A.D.
Increasing Ties to China in the Near Term
Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014, Putin obtained a $400-billion deal for the Russian oil and gas company Gazprom with China National Petroleum Corporation, the biggest natural gas deal for Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin called the agreement an “epochal event” solidifying Russia-China ties.
Beijing has yet to approve a second power of Siberia gas pipeline that would compensate for the loss of exported natural gas to Europe. But two-way trade has exploded since 2022. Trade with China has become Russia’s main lifeline. China-Russia dollar-denominated trade hit $240.1 billion in 2023, growing 26.3% from a year earlier. Furthermore, shipments to Russia jumped 46.9% in 2023 from a year earlier and soared 64.2% compared with 2021 before the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine War. In 2023, Russia exported half of its oil and petroleum products to China, though more recently, India has taken a majority share. Chinese automakers are taking over Russian markets, especially with the exodus of European car companies.
Russian elites worry about Moscow’s dependence on Beijing, distrustful of a China still economically reliant on Western consumers and unprepared to break its ties. For the next decade, if not longer, Russians have few options to their reliance on China, even if they build a bigger sphere of activity outside China in the Global South. Nevertheless, with planned and existing networks of rail and energy pipelines and the Northern Sea Route (NSR), Moscow is laying the foundations for a resurgence that brings more balance to its relations with China.
Transport and Trade Links
With Russia’s European trade practically stopped, its Asian ports are humming with activity, requiring more transport links to Russia’s western population centers. The carrying capacity of its rail networks spanning Siberia has reached 180 million tons in late 2024, an increase of 36 million since 2021, that Moscow plans to boost to 270 million tons by 2032. However, a report last year indicated that because of sanctions, the Ukraine war and record interest rates, Russian Railways, the operator for the rail network, has been forced to make deep cuts in the investment plans, compromising the goals set for its expansion. Regardless, China and Russia are building direct transport links to facilitate their growing mutual trade.
India is also exploring more transit links with Russia, but New Delhi is currently less invested than China. Moscow and New Delhi started work on the Vladivostok-Chennai Eastern Maritime Corridor, which will include connections to Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia. Indian Prime Minister Modi and Putin have signed a program of India-Russia cooperation on trade, economic links, and investment in the Russian Far East for 2024-2029. Another plan is the North–South Corridor, a railway route connecting Russia to the Indian Ocean via Iran.
Northern Sea Route
Development of a 5,600 kilometer-long sea route across the Arctic Ocean would shorten by almost half the current journey via the Suez Canal for Asian goods headed to Western ports. The route is navigable during the summer months. Only after a Ukraine peace could the route become a major artery that Western shippers would use.
Currently, the sea route is being used for the exploitation and transport of energy and minerals, which are abundant. The region has an estimated 13% of the world’s undiscovered oil and 30% of undiscovered natural gas. Most of the commercial traffic has been “LNG [liquid natural gas] heading from Russian facilities to Japan and China in specialist vessels,” along with oil in sanctioned cargo ships. In 2024, there was a “record volume for [such] transit cargo through the NSR from northwestern Russia through the Bering Strait to Asia.”
The Arctic’s Growing Geopolitical Importance
The GIUK gap, a key naval chokepoint between Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom, has seen increased Russian submarine patrols and exercises. Russia has for years prioritized an expanded presence in the Arctic through airfield renovation, the addition of bases, troop training, and the development of a network of military defense systems on the northern border. China is increasingly cooperating. In October 2024, the Chinese Coast Guard and the Russian Border Guard, for example, undertook their first joint patrol in the Arctic. China and Russia are now seen as having “comprehensive” Arctic cooperation in resources, shipping, scientific research and military drills.
Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping are both fascinated by the new Arctic route, representing for Putin “man conquering nature” a defining feature of Russian nationalism. For Xi, it is one maritime artery that is not presently controlled by the U.S. fleet.
Reaping Benefits From Climate Change
Moscow and much of Russia west of the Urals could see notable temperature increases by midcentury, but this is not expected to be accompanied by substantial decreases in rainfall or drought. Nevertheless, permafrost could melt, and methane could be released into the Earth’s atmosphere.
Warming temperatures are expected to increase economic output in Russia by boosting agricultural yields as well as arable land. A study recently published in the journal Nature estimated that in a “middle of the road” climate change scenario, income per capita in Northwestern Russia will increase by 20% due to increased temperatures. This finding is consistent with earlier studies, such as a 2017 analysis by the International Monetary Fund, which estimates that parts of Russia could see a several percentage-point increase in economic output per capita with each 1-degree Celsius increase.
Russia’s Renewables Potential
The International Energy Agency estimated in 2003 that the amount of renewable energy that is economically recoverable is equivalent to more than 270 million tons of coal annually. More recent analysis indicates Russia has the largest technical potential for renewable energy in the world and could be a major clean energy exporter. Russia is rich in numerous renewables: wind, hydro, geothermal, biomass, hydrogen, and solar energy, but their share in Russian energy consumption is very low.
As most countries begin to transition away from fossils fuels, a post-Putin leadership might seize the opportunity to accelerate the development of renewables. But there are impediments. Russia’s “decarbonization strategy lacks a countrywide carbon pricing system or other means to penalize emissions.” With a small domestic market and a gradual ban on cheaper Chinese inputs to preserve its technological sovereignty, Russia’s manufacturing capacity on renewables will struggle. While wedded to achieving net-zero carbon, Russia is relying on a twofold increase in natural carbon sinks in forests instead of renewables. (Natural carbon sinks – such as oceans and the Amazon Rain Forest – extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and absorb more carbon than they release.) It also wants technological sovereignty, which means mandatory local content requirements. With such a small domestic market and a gradual ban on cheaper Chinese inputs, Russia’s manufacturing capacity on renewables will struggle.
Moreover, renewable exports will only partially offset the loss of revenues from fossil fuel exports, as renewable costs decline and renewable production in nontraditional energy producers lessens global demand. An Asian energy grid, which Moscow proposed in the early 2000s, could be an outlet for Russia’s excess energy production, uniting the power plants of eastern Russia, China, Mongolia, South Korea, and Japan. Plans for a grid have stalled, but Japan’s SoftBank, a potential big investor, is not giving up on the idea.
Russia is very competitive in nuclear energy and “despite sanctions on its economy, Russia continues to be an unrivalled exporter of nuclear power plants.” More than a third of the new reactors are being constructed with Russia’s state-owned nuclear energy corporation’s, Rosatom’s, help.
A More Welcoming Environment Than in the West
The Indians stand out on overall favorability of Russia, with a majority viewing Russia as an ally in a 2025 European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) survey. Indians see Russia as a counterbalance to China. Indeed, Putin engineered a Modi-Xi meeting at the 2024 BRICS Summit in Kazan leading to a reduction of Sino-Indian tensions. Modi visited Russia twice in 2024, and Putin is scheduled to visit New Delhi in 2025.
Other Asian countries exhibit a remarkably strong acceptance of Russia as a partner despite the brutal neocolonial war in Ukraine. Most Chinese view Russia as an ally, according to a January 2023 ECFR poll. Understandably, Japan, South Korea, and Australia — like their European counterparts — dislike Russia, according to a 2024 Pew poll, but most other populations in South and Southeast Asia view Russia favorably.
Russia’s strengthening ties with North Korea also increases its importance in Asia. The June 2024 treaty signed by both countries “provides a means [for Russia] to exert influence in East Asia and counterbalance the pressures from the West.” China does not like the fact that Moscow has brought North Korea out of isolation.
New Leadership and An Easing of East-West Tensions
Potential is one thing, achievement is another. Without peace, the young, educated, and skilled Russians who left at the offset of Ukraine war may not return in sufficient numbers to renew Russia’s former tech excellence. Continuing hostilities with the West and a growing defense budget will also drain resources for any Russian transformation. The gains, however, could be significant with a new Russia pivoted to the East and reaping economic opportunities from climate change and a more favorable geopolitical environment. Quantitative analysis that we have undertaken and comparison with two other scenarios show the favorable gains that Russia could reap in labor and total factor productivity with growing influence in the Global South. Success in developing a normative relationship with the US and West would reopen the door to international finance and technology. A new Russia will probably remain ambivalent about the West and still pose challenges.
Notes
- 1Paul Robinson, Russian Conservatism, (Ithaca, NY: Northern Illinois University Press, 2019).
