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Vladimir Putin
CommentUnited States
Dmitriy Frolovskiy
Dmitriy Frolovskiy

As Putin pivots to Asia, will more Russian defence and energy deals be the new normal in the region?

  • Dmitriy Frolovskiy says Vladimir Putin’s decision to attend the East Asia Summit signals his determination to diversify Russia’s relationships away from Europe
  • Whether Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir will warm to Russia, as the Philippines and Indonesia have recently, remains to be seen

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Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) and his Vietnamese counterpart Tran Dai Quang give a press conference at the Kremlin in Moscow on June 29, 2017. Trade between the two countries reached US$5.2 billion last year. Photo: AFP
Dmitriy Frolovskiy
Vladimir Putin is sending a clear signal that he seeks to expand the multifaceted diplomatic efforts that comprise Moscow’s “pivot to Asia” by attending the East Asia Summit in Singapore, on November 14 and 15. With the never-ending battle over sanctions souring Russia’s relations with both Europe and the United States, Asia remains the most promising arena for Russian diplomatic and commercial engagement.
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The Russian president’s attendance is already noteworthy in and of itself, given that the Kremlin has typically sent Dmitry Medvedev in his stead since Russia became a full member of the summit in 2011. But whether this higher profile will bring tangible progress for Russia’s Asian outreach remains an open question.

This increased focus on East Asia represents something of a course correction for Putin. The Kremlin has overlooked the rise of the Asia-Pacific over the past quarter of a century. Instead, Russia continued to look to Europe as its major political and economic partner in the period following the fall of the Soviet Union up until the diplomatic breakdown that followed the annexation of Crimea.

Russia’s policymakers and business community now perceive East Asia in general – and increasingly the Association of Southeast Asian Nation countries in particular – as an outlet to diversify international relationships away from Europe, and more particularly the sanctions hitting the Russian economy.

Having neglected the region in the past, Russia is now having to play catch up to compete with China, the US and Japan. As Putin pointed out in a Bloomberg op-ed published almost exactly a year ago, the share of Russian foreign trade pertaining to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) economies grew from 23 per cent to 31 per cent from 2012-2017. Among the individual Asean countries, that growth has often been even more pronounced.

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