“The West’s plans to isolate Russia and surround us with a cordon sanitaire have been a failure,” Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, recently boasted. “We are strengthening good-neighbourly relations… with the international majority.” At first glance, Lavrov seems to be right. On February 23, the eve of the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, 39 countries refused to endorse a condemning resolution at the United Nations. Despite the sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies, the Russian economy and trade have held up surprisingly well. Lavrov himself has quietly racked up a fair amount of miles visiting foreign capitals.
On paper, Russia’s geopolitical weight seems impressive. It has soldiers and mercenaries deployed in at least 16 other countries. In some cases, they back friendly autocrats, as in Mali and Syria. In others, they fuel “frozen conflicts” that keep countries like Georgia in check and out of NATO. Over the past decade, Russia has supplied more than half of the arms imports of 22 different countries, including big ones like China and India. It has benefited in the United Nations from the support, or at least the useful abstention, of several dozen countries.
Natural resources and technology amplify its power. In the decade before the invasion, Russia was the main supplier of natural gas to more than a dozen countries, giving it an energy weapon that it has not hesitated to wield against Europe: in 2005, in 2009, and again last year. Ten countries generate a significant part of their electricity from Russian-built nuclear reactors, or else cooperate closely with Russia on nuclear technologies.
Russia’s diplomatic resilience has many in the West worried. Peter Frankopan, Professor of History at Oxford University, recently wrote that resentment of the West and skyrocketing energy prices were turning the international system in a Russian-friendly direction. Newspapers, think tanks and experts lament that the West has failed to isolate Russia or win over a large number of developing countries. However, data compiled by The Economist for a range of military, economic and diplomatic parameters (and what we might call the “Putin friends index”) paints a more mixed picture (see box).
The index analyzes 11 different parameters of support or potential for coercion in three large areas. The first is military. Have you signed alliance treaties with Russia? Do you have Russian soldiers or mercenaries on your territory? Have they supplied Russia with weapons since the war began? Do they depend on Russian weapons? Have they conducted maneuvers with Russia since the start of the war? The second is diplomatic. Have countries voted against Russia or abstained on key UN resolutions, or have they voted with Russia at least twice on those resolutions?
The third set of parameters focuses on energy and the economy. Do they depend on Russian gas, nuclear power plants or Russian technology? Does trade with Russia constitute an important part of your total trade? Have exports to Russia increased since the war?
The categories are not weighted, so countries are scored with a simple total. This somewhat approximate index is not meant to reflect the subtle nuances of the diplomatic stances taken by many countries. However, it does provide a framework for assessing a country’s relationship with Russia and whether it might be vulnerable to coercion.
The half dozen countries that get the highest scores are those linked to Russia mostly for political, historical and geographical reasons, such as Armenia, Belarus, Iran and Kyrgyzstan. Next is a long list of countries with less close ties to Russia; These include giants like China and India and much more modest ones like Eritrea and Nicaragua. One way of thinking about the universe of countries with ties to Russia is to group them into three categories: the “coalition of the failed”; the “Soviet nostalgia society”; and the “axis of the opportunists”.
Let’s start with the coalition of the failed. Vladimir Putin likes to quote Tsar Alexander III: “Russia has only two allies: the army and the navy.” The statement is closer to the truth than Putin would like. On paper, Russia has five formal allies in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSO): Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. All of them are bound by treaty to help each other in case of attack. However, no CSTO member has supported Russia’s war in Ukraine with troops, although Belarus has allowed the use of its territory as a military base.
Not only that, but some OTCS members are trying to distance themselves from the war. Armenia is angry that the 3,500 Russian soldiers stationed in the country did not come to its aid during the war with Azerbaijan in 2020. It has refused to host this year’s OTCS maneuvers and now seems to want to heal when it comes to the political sponsors inviting a European Union mission to monitor its border with Azerbaijan.
Kazakhstan has long been a close ally of Russia. Last year Putin sent troops into the country to quell anti-government protests. However, that did not stop Kazakh President Kasim-Yomart Tokaev from criticizing Ukraine’s war in front of Putin during a visit to St. Petersburg in June. In February, Kazakhstan hosted Antony Blinken, US Secretary of State. Mark Galeotti of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank draws parallels with Britain’s post-imperial decline. In his view, Moscow’s move away from central Asia is “Putin’s ‘Suez moment’.”
Apart from Belarus, only Iran and North Korea have sent weapons to Russia. The US government estimates that North Korea has delivered a “significant” number of artillery shells, though not enough to alleviate Russia’s shortage or turn the tide of the war. Iran has sent explosives-laden drones that have helped Russia continue to bomb Ukraine as its own missile stocks were running low. It has also sent “military advisers” to help Russia manage them.
However, Iran, which maintained a clear non-alignment stance during the Cold War, is now divided on how far to pander to Moscow. Hardliners in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps hope their support will be rewarded with modern fighter jets and anti-aircraft missiles. However, the relatively moderate voices in the Foreign Office are afraid of further antagonizing the West and approving the invasion of neighboring countries (especially considering that the Soviet Union conquered much of the country during World War II). Against that group of three allies ready to arm Russia, a Western alliance of 31 countries has publicly confirmed that it is sending arms to Ukraine.
From a diplomatic point of view, Russia seems almost as isolated. Only four countries (Belarus, Nicaragua, North Korea and Syria) have consistently voted against the seven United Nations General Assembly resolutions that have condemned Russia’s behavior in Ukraine since 2014, when its troops seized the Crimean peninsula. Another half dozen, including Bolivia, Eritrea and Mali, have voted with Russia at least twice.
The countries in the coalition of the failed have much in common. Neither is a proper democracy. Some, like Syria, depend directly on Russian soldiers or mercenaries for the survival of their governments. Others, like Eritrea, are global pariahs that rely on Russia for diplomatic support at the United Nations Security Council. And the coalition is shrinking. In 2014, when the United Nations voted to condemn the annexation of Crimea, Russia had the support of ten countries. Since then, several have withdrawn their endorsements. Among them are Bolivia, formerly under the rule of Evo Morales, a leftist strongman, and Sudan, which was ruled by Omar al Bashir, a genocidal dictator who hated the West.
About 30 other countries are theoretically neutral and tend to abstain from voting on Ukraine. Many refuse to take sides, says Dmitri Alperovitch, director of the Silverado Policy Accelerator, a US think tank. His attitude is rather, as he affirms: “Over there, they are two white countries fighting each other.”
A subset of countries constitutes the Soviet nostalgia society. While they don’t offer any serious diplomatic or military help, they tend to lean towards Russia, with things like holding military exercises alongside its armed forces or repeating arguments that NATO expansion or Ukraine itself is to blame for the war.
It’s not always easy to unravel their motives, but some common threads emerge. Some countries, such as Algeria, Angola and South Africa, profess sympathy for Russia in part because of its historical ties to the Soviet Union (they seem to forget that the Ukraine was also part of the USSR); or, what is even more paradoxical, because they remember the USSR as an ally of the oppressed peoples in their fight against the imperialists.
However, Soviet nostalgia is not the only factor at play; above all, in Africa, where the majority of the countries that have abstained in the key votes of the United Nations are located. In many cases, politicians or ruling parties owe Russia favors for helping finance or attempting to influence elections. The African National Congress, in power in South Africa, for example, has received large donations from a Russian-linked mining company. This may have influenced his decision to receive Lavrov and to carry out military exercises with the Russian navy.
Russian diplomacy in Africa focuses on security assistance and arms sales. The Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank, has pointed out in a recent report that, compared to the seven African military cooperation agreements signed by Russia between 2010 and 2017, between 2017 and 2021 it signed 20. In the group of the most In recent years, more than half were with countries with which Russia had no prior military ties.
Russia is not just a big arms supplier. It has also become the arms dealer of last resort, gaining influence in countries cut off from Western supplies by coups and human rights violations, such as Mali and the Central African Republic. Western arms embargoes “opened the door [for the Russians],” says J. Peter Pham, the US special envoy for the Sahel under the Trump administration. “The truth is that we cannot blame Malians for trying to get as much as they can.”
In some cases, however, Russia’s attempts to gain influence have failed miserably. Madagascar, for example, fell out with Russia after that country was caught trying to tilt a presidential election in favor of pro-Russian candidates in 2019. After five fighters from Wagner, a Russian mercenary company, were captured and beheaded by jihadists in Mozambique , the country turned to Rwanda and the West for help on security.
“Wherever they go, they seem to have problems related to political interference,” says Samuel Ramani, also a member of RUSI and author of the book Russia in Africa, published last month. Russia’s mistakes in poor countries are often similar to its intelligence mistakes in Ukraine, such as overestimating the popularity of local representatives or leaders. “It is something that has to do, above all, with general incompetence and also with a misinterpretation of local situations,” says Ramani.
Nuclear power offers Putin another potential lever. Rosatom, Russia’s state-owned nuclear power company, is the world’s largest exporter of reactors. According to an article published last month in Nature Energy by Kacper Szulecki and Indra Overland of the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, at least nine countries, including Bangladesh and Egypt, could be vulnerable to political pressure because of their reliance on built or exploited by Russia. Several other countries maintain a high level of nuclear cooperation with Russia. However, perhaps that, too, is weakening. The interruption of gas exports to Europe may undermine Russia’s overall reputation as a reliable supplier of energy.
The third group of countries (the axis of the opportunists) sees in the Western sanctions an opportunity to boost their own trade with Russia on advantageous terms. Russian imports of goods plunged more than 40% in the first months after the invasion, according to an analysis by the Silverado Policy Accelerator. However, by September they had already recovered; to a large extent, because China and Turkey, above all, intervened to replace exports from Europe and the United States (see chart).
So far, the West has shown itself unable to completely block Russian imports of high-tech items such as computer chips, which are used in missiles and other weapons. Russia has continued to import between a third and a half of the chips it imported before the start of the war, thanks in large part to a large increase from China.
At first, Russia’s attack on Ukraine seemed to catch that country off guard. China had concluded a “no limits” strategic partnership agreement just weeks before Russian tanks crossed the Ukrainian border. After that first moment, Chinese supreme leader Xi Jinping has tried to take advantage of the situation, seeing it as an opportunity to distract the United States from its efforts to confront China, especially in relation to Taiwan.
At the same time, Xi has scaled his response to try to shield China from any US or allied retaliation. Thus, Chinese officials declare themselves neutral with respect to Ukraine; they refuse to condemn the Russian invasion, but blame the war on the expansion of NATO since the end of the Cold War. A big question is whether China will start supplying Russia with weapons for use in Ukraine. This could alleviate Russia’s ammunition shortage and perhaps turn the tide of the war.
Turkey’s relationship with Russia is more complex. Turkey is a member of NATO. It has sold armed drones to Ukraine and is also believed to have sent rockets and precision artillery. It competes with Russia for influence from the Middle East to Central Asia. It has waged proxy wars against that country in Syria and Libya. However, it is also dependent on Russia for gas and help to build nuclear power plants. He earns billions of dollars a year from Russian tourists. All this keeps both countries in a situation of mutual dependence. Turkey finds it advantageous to play off Russia and the West. Russia, for its part, seems willing to overlook Turkish support for Ukraine as long as trade continues to flow.
India could benefit much more than it does from trade with Russia. It has consistently refused to condemn the Russian invasion and has increased its imports of discounted Russian oil (although it now says it will abide by a Western-imposed price cap). The country remains a big buyer of Russian arms. At the same time, it does not appear to have become a key route for getting sanctioned goods to Russia. In fact, the value of Indian exports to Russia has declined since the invasion.
The West has tried to distance some of Putin’s remaining friends. It has deterred countries like Belarus from playing a more active role in the war and like Iran from supplying ballistic missiles. However, Ukraine’s allies have made no headway on how to counter (or even whether to) Russian influence in poor countries.
The first step might be not to exaggerate the importance of the “soft” support offered to Russia by its fellow travelers; especially when it translates into little more than abstention from United Nations votes or other symbolic gestures of solidarity. “I am concerned that if we try to counter any and all manifestations of Russian influence, we will find ourselves in an unprofitable game,” says Andrew Weiss, Russia specialist at the US think tank. “In some cases, we run the risk of putting too much effort into problems that are not very strategically important.”
At the same time, the West could take relatively cheap measures to counter Wagner’s expansion into Africa. One option would be to help arm and support regional security forces and friendly governments so that they are not forced to turn to Russia for security. Similarly, in dealing with the opportunist axis, the West must carefully calibrate its own red lines, express them clearly, and not protest the increased trade in high-tech and military goods on the fringes. You need to keep your cheap gunpowder dry to discourage China or other countries from sending weapons and ammunition. One year after Putin’s invasion, Russia is not as isolated as some in the West had hoped. However, Lavrov’s claim that she is surrounded by good friends is far from true.
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Translation: Juan Gabriel López Guix
