The ASEAN summit held in Russia last week was one of the Kremlin’s biggest diplomatic successes since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Despite Western sanctions, a lack of progress on the battlefield, growing economic problems, and more frequent Ukrainian drone attacks, Putin was able to gather the leaders of one of the world’s most dynamic regions, representing more than 700mn people and about 9% of global GDP growth.

The meeting marks a new phase in Putin’s attempt to rebuild Russia’s economy and his big bet on the Global South Century. In the first year of the war Russia was trying to simply survive. In the next two years Russia was busy building alternative trade routes to circumnavigate sanctions. But at this meeting, the goal has expanded again as the Kremlin seeks to define and refine an economic block that doesn’t depend on the West.

June 18 saw the most spectacular Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia to date. Images of an explosion lifting the roof of an oil storage tank into the air in the Russian capital quickly went viral just as Putin was taking part in a summit between Russia and the eleven nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Kazan.”

“That attack followed on from a similar Ukrainian drone psyop that struck oil terminals in St Petersburg, lifting plumes of thick black smoke into the air just as delegates arrived for the first day of St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Russia’s premier investment forum. “

Putin didn’t blink. He was busy thanking Laos Prime Minister Sonexay Siphandone for a gift of two elephants. “You can rest assured that they will be kept in the best conditions and will bring very much joy to all animal lovers,” Putin told Siphandone.

At the start of the Ukraine war most of the Global South tried to sit on the fence. However, the advent of US President Donald Trump’s presidency has pushed more and more of these leaders off and they are falling into the emerging BRICS bloc, led by Russia and China.

 US President Donald Trump’s war against Iran has catalysed that process. It has created major problems for the countries of Southeast Asia, forcing them to seek alternative sources of hydrocarbons and fertilizer. One of their solutions has been to turn to Moscow. At the same time growing competition between the United States and China is pushing the region to deepen ties with other influential countries, making Russia a desirable partner even though it’s engaged in a major war and operating under Western sanctions. Russia is generally cast as being dependent on China, but from the Global South’s perspective the ASEAN countries are equally afraid of their own tendency on China and turn to Russia as an emerging superpower that can balance their helplessness and give them potential leverage over Beijing. The Kremlin is welcoming these allies for the same reason and has already adroitly used their strategy in the Middle East where Moscow is friends with everyone and seen as an honest broker amongst the otherwise mutual rivals in the region.

Part of the deal is to find new markets and ASEAN countries are already an important trade partner. Russian exports not only oil, gas, and fertilizers, but also weapons and nuclear power equipment. And Southeast Asia is booming, hungry for commodities, energy and affordable technology in addition to military hardware and security guarantees.

As IntelliNews reported, the SPIEF summit was billed as a failure in the western press thanks to the Ukraine drone attack and the lack of western CEOs that used to flock to the event. However, less widely noted was the 3,000 delegates from 142 countries that attended to sign off on an estimated $100bn worth of deals, making SPIEF the most important investment summit in the Eurasia region.

The turnout in Kazan for the ASEAN event was equally impressive: nine of eleven heads of state from ASEAN were present, along with the Indonesian foreign minister and a special representative from MyanMarch Indonesian, the fourth most populous nation on earth, dithered for two years, but finally decided to join the BRICS+ group in January.

“Above all, these men decided to make the long journey to Russia because of US and Israeli attacks on Iran causing higher prices for energy and fertilizer. Aside from Brunei, all ASEAN members import energy—and most of them don’t have the ninety-day reserves held by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development states,” Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, observed in a note.

Iran and the US have signed off on an MoU to end the hostilities and a shaky ceasefire appears to be holding for now, but fighting restarting remains high. The US decision to weaponize the dollar by banning Russia from SWIFT and freezing $300bn in central bank reserves shocked Global South regulators who have reduced their share of dollars in their reserves. Trump’s unprovoked attack on Iran and the subsequent energy shock has had similar unintended consequences of pushing Global South countries to court Russia as an alternative source of energy and raw materials, simply as a hedge against more Trumpian chaos. It was unsurprising, then, that one of the documents signed in Kazan was a joint statement on energy cooperation.

For the Kremlin, the ASEAN summit was a diplomatic coup on a par with the 2024 BRICS summit also in Kazakh. That summit successfully demonstrated to the world that the leading nations of the Global South were unbothered by Russia’s diplomatic isolation and droves of businessmen and leaders made their way to the picturesque Russian regional capital.

And unlike the values-focused West, Asian leaders are a lot more pragmatic. No one mentioned the war in Ukraine. The topic was not during negotiations—at least in the parts open to the public. And although Singapore imposed sanctions on Russia for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong told Putin that his country valued “our relationship with Russia, the government of Russia, and the people of Russia.” Predictably, Russian state media outlets had a field day with Wong’s comments.

Unlike SPIEF few commercial contracts were announced, but it is clear that deals were being discussed behind closed doors. Putin’s meetings with the prime ministers of Vietnam and Malaysia, for example, was Dmitry Shugayev, who oversees arms exports as the head of Russia’s Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation. Both Hanoi and Kuala Lumpur are major, long-standing clients of Russian state arms exporter Rosoboronexport, and Moscow is clearly interested in deepening those ties, Gabuev notes. The war in Ukraine is a marketing boon for Russian hardware that can now boast it has been battle tested in a hot war with a Nato-armed adversary.

Putin’s diplomatic outreach to ASEAN is a work in progress, and while it makes long-term strategic sense to build up a wide network of allies, for the meantime the relationship benefits ASEAN members more than Russia. In 2025, Russia’s trade with ASEAN countries was worth about $22bn—compared to $228bn with China.

Transport links between Russia and ASEAN are also underdeveloped as the bulk of investment in Soviet times tied Russia’s European regions to Central Europe. Little was invested into linking to Asian markets. At the same time, ASEAN countries remain largely commodities, energy and agricultural trade customers and have not invested much into the Russian economy. But the whole region is booming, increasingly central to global manufacturing and consumption and home to about 700mn people. That is what Putin has been betting on all along.