Russian Trade with Former Soviet Republics Rising as Kremlin Influence Declines

Russian Trade with Former Soviet Republics Rising as Kremlin Influence Declines

Executive Summary:

• Russia has increased trade with former Soviet republics since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine—nearly doubling between 2020 and 2024—even as its political influence in the post-Soviet space is declining.
• This trade increase stems primarily from former Soviet republics re-exporting Western-sanctioned goods to Russia.  
• When Russia’s war against Ukraine ends and sanctions ease, Moscow will likely end re-export arrangements, causing bilateral trade to decrease, potentially causing these countries to further distance themselves from Russia. The Kremlin is likely to consider soft and hard power solutions to maintain its influence in response. 

There is nearly universal recognition that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine has cost Moscow political influence across the former Soviet space. Other countries, first and foremost the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the United States, have filled the resulting vacuum, according to Anton Barbashin, editor of the Riddle outlet (Riddle, December 17, 2025). Attention to the decrease in Russian political influence has overshadowed and often obscured Russia’s increasing trade with the former Soviet republics. Between 2020 and 2024, the last year for which figures are available, trade turnover between Russia and these countries as a group nearly doubled from $63 billion dollars to $125 billion. The trade increase between the former Soviet republics and the PRC between 2020 and 2024 was $107.8 billion to $244 billion, an increase that slightly outpaces Russia’s but has garnered far more attention. Russian trade with these countries likely increased because of the re-export of goods under Western sanctions. If this trade increase declines with the end of Putin’s expanded war against Ukraine, Moscow may feel compelled to use other means to try to maintain or increase its influence, up to and including military force.  

Russian political influence in the former Soviet space has declined since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Even pro-Kremlin analysts acknowledge this shift, even as Moscow tries to play down its losses (Window on Eurasia, April 30, 2024, August 31, 2025). In the first months of the war, many in the West predicted that Putin’s military move would lead to the complete disintegration of the former Soviet space as the former union republics turned away from Moscow, including in bilateral trade (Chatham House, May 3, 2022). While Russian influence in these countries has continued to decline, their trade with the Russian Federation has risen in all but Moldova and the three Baltic countries—and in many cases significantly (Riddle, December 17, 2025). 

Bilateral trade between Russia and Armenia quintupled between 2020 and 2024. In seven others—Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Belarus, and Tajikistan—the increase has been significant. In two—Georgia and Kazakhstan—the rise has been moderate. Only in Moldova, which is closer to Europe and separated from the Russian Federation by Ukraine, has there been a decline. This trade growth has been driven by these countries’ re-export of goods sanctioned by the West in response to Putin’s war against Ukraine. There were some sanctioned Russian goods as of 2014, when Putin illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimea, but they were a much smaller fraction of Russian trade. In the Armenian case, the country that saw the greatest growth in bilateral trade, re-exports formed as much as 80 percent of the goods Yerevan sent to the Russian Federation (Armenpress, November 27, 2023). In other countries, the share of re-exports was smaller, and hence this factor had a relatively smaller impact on bilateral trade figures.  

The level that these figures vary from changes in political influence is striking. Few of the former Soviet republics moved further and faster away from Moscow than Armenia during this period, despite Yerevan posting extraordinary trade growth (see EDM, April 5, June 3, 2022, March 5, 2024, January 28, 2025). Many of the others who have seen their trade with Russia rise significantly were increasingly at odds with Russia, sometimes breaking with Moscow on issues Putin cares about, suspending other forms of cooperation with Russia, and—as in the case most prominently of Azerbaijan—allowing relations with Russia to slide into a state of crisis rather than falling into line as Moscow has demanded (see EDM, July 22, 2025). 

Trade provides Moscow with some leverage, even in countries that are politically at odds with the Russian Federation. As long as Putin’s war against Ukraine goes on and sanctions continue, however, this is a weapon that the Kremlin can wield only at the likely cost of hurting itself.  When the war ends and sanctions are eased or eliminated, a new situation will emerge, one in which Moscow will have less need or interest in re-export arrangements. In that case, the Russian government is likely to end re-export arrangements. When that happens, Moscow will significantly reduce trade with its neighbors, given the role the re-export trade plays in their recent increases in bilateral trade. That, in turn, will affect economic relations and possibly political ones as well.

If the re-export trade ends and Moscow is unwilling or unable to compensate for that economically, many of these countries are likely to decide that the time has come to distance themselves further from the Russian Federation and seek closer ties with the PRC or other powers. Putin’s increasingly Russian nationalist stance will only add to that likelihood. That pattern is already apparent within the Russian Federation, but it is also having less obvious, yet perhaps ultimately fateful, consequences in Moscow’s relations with the former Soviet republics, which are now independent countries (see EDM, June 24, 2025). 

Chinese security analysts are already well aware of those possibilities. Zhou Bo, a retired People’s Liberation Army colonel and now a senior fellow at Tsinghua University’s Center for International Security and Strategy, recently argued that once the war against Ukraine ends, Moscow will have a much smaller sphere of influence, and the Kremlin will expand its efforts to control what is left of its empire even more vigorously (South China Morning Post, December 1, 2025).

Indications of Moscow’s intentions regarding what it might do in response to a further decline in its influence over its neighbors come in two forms. On the one hand, it has been boosting its spending on soft power initiatives in these countries, hoping to convince populations and elites that their future should lie with Russia rather than with anyone else. It is also now spending vastly more on soft power initiatives than almost anyone else (Svobodnaya Pressa, January 12). On the other hand, some Russian commentators close to the Kremlin are now talking about the need to use military force against other former Soviet republics that do not hew to Moscow’s line, something that is already triggering an angry response (Novaya Gazeta; The Times of Central Asia, January 12).