By Daryl Morini
Moscow has unleashed an intensive charm offensive in East Asia since last month’s APEC conference, during which time Russian officials have gone to great lengths to show that Moscow’s brief period of internal weakness and isolation from Asia has come to an end.
Soon after the Vladivostok summit, Russia announced that it was writing off most of North Korea’s Soviet era-debt (worth $11 billion). Later in September, Russia hosted an energy conference in Sakhalin, its territory to the north of Japan, where Gazprom intends to invest more than $14 billion to further expand its energy sales in Eastern Asia.
Finally, another government official speaking at a recent business conference in Singapore expressed Russia’s intention to increase trade links with Asia to the point where Asian markets are the destination for half of Moscow’s exports, or over $250 billion in current trade. Russia will start by negotiating a free trade agreement with Vietnam next year.
Russia’s reawakening as a Pacific power is a matter of consequence for us all. As I suggested in my last piece, however, there are many outdated assumptions on Russia’s role in Asia. One such myth, which I discussed in the last piece, is that Russia has traditionally had little to do with Asia.
Read the full story at The Diplomat