Reshaping Russia’s International Economic Cooperation amid Sanctions and New Challenges

Abstract

Over the past decade, the formats, areas, structure and geography of Russia’s international economic cooperation have changed significantly due to expanding crisis phenomena in the international economic system, emergence of new challenges and escalation of anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the collective West following the special military operation. The unprecedented sanctions in scale and reach anti-Russian sanctions have affected the global economy, which was struggling to recover after the pandemic shock, and caused severe market imbalances and rising prices, thus confirming Russia’s critical roles in the markets for many strategic commodities. The anti-Russian sanctions and peculiarities of commodity price movements infl uenced greatly the parameters of Russia’s international economic cooperation in 2022. The main outcome of 2022 was the winding down of economic ties with the West, which lost its role as Russia’s leading trade and economic partner in almost all areas of cooperation, including completely – as a market for Russian fuels. At the same time, the eastern vector of Russia’s foreign economic policy has been consolidated and scaled up, with a qualitative strengthening of the role of individual countries for Russia’s trade policy, primarily China, Turkey and India. With the economic bipolarity trend and a perspective scenario of a world of blocs, China’s role in Russia’s foreign trade is comprehensively growing and the relevance of working out new strategic formats of cooperation, such as Russia-China technological alliance and China and the EAEU-China deep free trade zone, is increasing.