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How Russia is Rewiring the Global South

By Salman Rafi Sheikh – New Eastern Outlook – September 25, 2026

The West may have pushed Russia out of its orbit, but it cannot push Russia out of the world.

Russia’s Diplomatic Blitz

Over the past two weeks, Russian President Vladimir Putin has staged a remarkable diplomatic blitz. Across three major gatherings in Bishkek, Vladivostok and New Delhi, as well as during Vietnamese leader To Lam’s state visit to Moscow, Putin met a succession of heads of state from across Asia and the wider Global South. Among them were the leaders of China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia and Turkey.

The sheer intensity of this diplomacy is difficult to reconcile with the notion—aggressively propagated by Western political elites and the media—that Russia has been internationally isolated. Moscow may be estranged from Washington and most European capitals, but its diplomatic and economic relationships elsewhere have been expanding. More importantly, Russia is increasingly operating at the centre of a network of states that are seeking greater strategic autonomy from the Western-led international order.

That does not make these countries a Russian bloc per se. India continues to maintain close relations with the United States; China has its own global ambitions; Turkey is a NATO member; and the BRICS countries have yet to develop a common framework of global action. But it does demonstrate that Russia’s post-2022 so-called “isolation” exists only in the Western perspective. The reality outside of this perspective is totally different.

Moscow’s Reorientation

The Western strategy towards Russia after the start of the military conflict in Ukraine was built partly around economic and diplomatic isolation. The United States and European Union imposed extensive sanctions, restricted access to Western technology and finance, and dramatically reduced many forms of economic engagement with Moscow. Russia responded by accelerating a pivot that had already begun towards Asia and other non-Western regions.

The transformation is particularly visible in trade. Asia accounted for 73.4 percent of Russia’s trade turnover in 2025. China and India have become particularly important destinations for Russian energy exports, while Moscow has simultaneously expanded commercial and strategic relationships across the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

India is perhaps the clearest illustration of this adjustment. Despite its increasingly close strategic relationship with Washington, New Delhi has sharply expanded its economic engagement with Moscow. Reuters reported this month that India and Russia have developed payment arrangements using the rupee and rouble that facilitate the overwhelming majority of bilateral trade. Bilateral trade reached roughly $70 billion in 2024, with both sides targeting $100 billion by 2030. The significance lies not simply in the volume of trade. It is the development of mechanisms that allow countries to maintain economic relationships despite restrictions imposed by Western financial systems.

This is an important distinction. The Global South is not necessarily seeking to replace the West. Many of its governments remain deeply integrated into Western markets and institutions. What they increasingly seek is the ability to maintain alternative relationships when their interests diverge from those of Washington or Brussels. Russia has not only become one of the principal beneficiaries of that preference, but it’s actively cultivating ties on its own too—something clearly evident from the diplomatic blitz mentioned above.

BRICS And the Search for Strategic Autonomy

The most important arena for this transformation is BRICS. The grouping has expanded substantially from its original membership and now includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Its members represent a substantial share of the world’s population and economic output. Although member countries apparently have different geopolitical and national interests, this diversity is not a weakness but BRICS’s defining characteristic.

The grouping provides a political space in which countries can discuss reforms to international institutions, alternative financial mechanisms, trade arrangements and greater representation for emerging economies without having to accept a common ideological position. This is different from Washington’s demands for conformity from its allies in Europe and North America. But BRICS agenda increasingly overlaps with Russia’s own interests.

At the BRICS summit in New Delhi, member states called for greater influence over international economic governance and raised concerns about unilateral trade and financial measures. India has also promoted mechanisms that could eventually facilitate greater use of alternative payment systems. New Delhi has proposed linking central-bank digital currencies among BRICS countries, although substantial technical and political obstacles remain.

For Moscow, these discussions have obvious significance. Western sanctions have made Russia deeply interested in payment mechanisms, financial arrangements and trading networks that are less vulnerable to Western restrictions. But Russia is not creating these demands by itself. It is benefiting from a broader transformation in the preferences of major non-Western states. The result is an unusual convergence. Russia wants alternatives because it has been subjected to Western restrictions. Other Global South governments want alternatives because they do not want their economic and diplomatic options constrained by decisions taken in Washington or Brussels. Therefore, even though the motivations are different, the direction of change is not.

The Geopolitics of a Networked World

This is why the most important consequence of Russia’s diplomatic reorientation may not be the survival of the Russian economy. It may be the emergence of a different geography of globalisation. Energy provides the clearest example. Russia has redirected large volumes of oil and gas towards Asian markets, while expanding nuclear-energy cooperation with countries beyond the West.

Transport infrastructure is developing alongside these commercial relationships. The International North-South Transport Corridor, linking Russia through Iran towards the Indian Ocean, is one example of efforts to create alternative routes between Eurasia and global markets. Russia’s expanding economic engagement with China, India, Iran and other Asian states is gradually creating overlapping networks of energy, transportation, finance and trade.

Vietnam illustrates the same pattern from another direction. During To Lam’s September visit to Moscow, Russia and Vietnam discussed cooperation in energy, science and technology, infrastructure and other sectors. Hanoi, like many Southeast Asian capitals, has little interest in choosing permanently between China, Russia, the United States, Japan, Europe and other partners. Its preference is diversification. That may ultimately prove to be the defining characteristic of the emerging international system.

Russia’s current diplomatic activism should therefore be understood in this larger context. Moscow is not simply looking for countries willing to circumvent sanctions or purchase its commodities. It is building relationships that can survive the political distance between Russia and the West.

The more the West defines its relationship with Russia through separation, sanctions and exclusion, the greater the incentive for Moscow to invest in a world beyond Western institutions, and the greater the incentive for other countries to make sure that such a world remains available. The irony is that the attempt to isolate Russia may therefore be contributing to something larger than Russia’s own diplomatic resilience: a global system in which isolation itself becomes increasingly difficult to impose.

Salman Rafi Sheikh, research analyst of international relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs

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September 25, 2026 - Posted by aletho | Economics | India, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Russia, United States, Vietnam