Eastern Economic Forum 2026: Is Russia Isolated?

By , President of Infinitum Corporation
Eastern Economic Forum 2026 in Vladivostok: delegations, agreements and the isolation question

The Ukraine Files · Part 3 of 8

By William Aaron Turner, President of Infinitum Corporation · The Ukraine Files: Full Series

In September 2026, more than 9,300 participants from 78 countries filled the halls of the Far Eastern Federal University in Vladivostok, according to the organizers. My X Article Checkmate in Vladivostok uses the 11th Eastern Economic Forum (EEF) as a window into a bigger question: if the West spent years announcing Russia's "complete isolation," why does the evidence keep pointing the other way? This post walks through the numbers, the Western admissions I cite, and the trade, energy and security links the article describes.

Key takeaways

  • More than 9,300 participants from 78 countries, including Russia, gathered for the four-day 11th EEF, according to the organizers' official results summary (Roscongress Foundation, September 2026), up from 75 countries the year before. Deputy PM Yury Trutnev: "I would struggle to name a major country not present at this forum."
  • At the 10th EEF in 2025, organizers reported 358 agreements worth 6.058 trillion rubles ($71 billion). The 2026 forum signed 328 agreements worth 6.815 trillion rubles (about $78.5 billion), according to the organizers' official results summary and TASS.
  • The article cites a Treasury Secretary, a Secretary of State, the Institute of International Finance and Chatham House, among others, acknowledging the limits of the sanctions strategy.
  • China-Russia trade totaled about $228 billion in 2025, India-Russia goods trade reached nearly $60 billion in 2025-26, and ASEAN-Russia trade was $17.8 billion in 2025.
  • More than 99% of commercial payments between Russia and China are now made in rubles and yuan, according to the article.

Inside the 11th Eastern Economic Forum

The forum's motto is that, "regardless of the geopolitical situation," Russia is ready to advocate for equal cooperation with all constructively minded countries. The article argues that the EEF has become a space where business and diplomacy continue largely uninterrupted by the tensions that dominate Western headlines. It quotes Berliner Zeitung as acknowledging that the forum signals Russia is building a long-term course toward Asia rather than Europe.

The EEF numbers

  • The article says that since 2018 at least 3 trillion rubles ($35 billion) of deals have been done each year.
  • Other sources put the 2025 figure at 6.58 trillion rubles ($81 billion). Minister Alexei Chekunkov called it "record-breaking for us," and about 80% of the agreements are expected to be implemented.
  • Over the years the forum has attracted nearly 3,000 investment projects to the Far East. By 2026 the cumulative figures were 6.8 trillion rubles in investments, 1,118 new enterprises and 163,000 new jobs, and Governor Oleg Kozhemyako noted over 180,000 jobs created across the Far East.
  • South Korea and Japan sent delegations to the 2026 forum despite sanctions packages from Brussels and Washington.

Western officials and institutions on sanctions

The most striking evidence in the piece comes from Western sources, not Moscow.

  • Scott Bessent (U.S. Treasury Secretary, November 2025): told NBC News that EU sanctions had "failed": "If you're going to do something 19 times, you've failed."
  • Marco Rubio (U.S. Secretary of State, mid-November 2025): said America was "running out of things to sanction" after blacklisting Lukoil and Rosneft.
  • J.D. Vance: "There is a fantasy that if we just give more money, more weapons, or more sanctions, victory is at hand."
  • Institute of International Finance (July 2025): concluded that sanctions "have fallen short of fully isolating Russia," and that real GDP grew by an average of 2.3% between 2022 and 2024. It listed "trade diversion, capital controls, a current account surplus, and a $700bn reserve buffer."
  • Le Temps (December 2025): "Nearly four years later, we see that Russia is far from being on its knees."

"Fortress Russia": Chatham House's explanation

Chatham House (September 2025) coined the term "Fortress Russia." The article, citing a Japanese analysis of that work, notes Russia faced a record 26,665 sanctions, far above the 6,027 imposed on Iran. The key points quoted:

  1. Russia prepared: it ran tight fiscal and monetary policy after 2014 and had over $600 billion in reserves by February 2022, with public debt below 20% of GDP.
  2. Western sanctions were "slow to roll out, well telegraphed, and filled with carve-outs and contradictions." Per IMF data, Russia ran a current account surplus of around $375 billion since the invasion.
  3. Secondary sanctions were "too weak and ineffectual."
  4. Russia moved to a war economy by diverting production and finding substitutes for imports.

I want to be fair to the other side of that same analysis. Chatham House also estimates real GDP growth around 1 per cent lower per year over the past decade and a cumulative dollar GDP loss "well in excess of $1.6 trillion." My argument is that those costs must be weighed against the predictions of collapse in 2022. The IMF estimated Russian GDP grew 4.9% in 2024 and 1% in 2025, and in April 2026 revised its 2026 forecast up 0.3 points to 1.1%.

The Asian pivot, country by country

China

China has been Russia's largest trading partner for sixteen consecutive years. Trade totaled $228.1 billion in 2025, down 6.9% from the record $244.8 billion in 2024. I note the article reports the decline was tied to a 46% fall in vehicle exports and falling oil prices. In 2026 the numbers turned up again: $85.2 billion in the first four months (up nearly 20%) and $159.24 billion over seven months, up 26.3%. The article also quotes the Financial Times saying Moscow is "more dependent on Beijing" than vice versa and noting energy revenues down about 38% year on year. Wedge magazine calls China's economy roughly nine times the size of Russia's.

India

India-Russia goods trade rose from about $13 billion in 2021-22 to nearly $60 billion in 2025-26, but is lopsided: $55.3 billion in Indian imports, mostly oil, against $4.5 billion in exports. Russian crude was a record 50.83% of India's oil imports in July 2026 (2.47 million barrels per day). External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar called addressing the imbalance "one of our foremost priorities" and reaffirmed a $100 billion trade goal by 2030.

Southeast Asia

ASEAN's two-way merchandise trade with Russia reached $17.8 billion in 2025, which ASEAN Secretary-General Kao Kim Hourn called "still very much modest." The Russia-ASEAN Summit in Kazan in June 2026 adopted the Kazan Declaration 2026 and a Joint Statement on Energy Cooperation covering LNG, natural gas, renewable energy and hydrogen. Malaysian PM Anwar Ibrahim said frameworks are "not enough" without enabling policies.

Energy and infrastructure

  • Power of Siberia 1 reached its designed 38 billion cubic meters per year in 2025. Russia and China signed a legally binding memorandum on Power of Siberia 2 (50 billion cubic meters a year via Mongolia), though the article also reports, citing Western outlets, that no final deal was reached during Putin's May 2026 Beijing visit and that China paid about $258 per thousand cubic meters in 2025.
  • Pacific Railway: a 531-kilometer line connecting Yakutia and the Khabarovsk Territory, inaugurated in September 2025, with annual capacity of 50 million tons.
  • Cross-border links: new bridges across the Amur River and a planned cross-border cable car between Heihe and Blagoveshchensk.

De-dollarization

This is where the article sees the most durable change. Putin confirmed in May 2026 that nearly all Russia-China export-import operations are in national currencies. The article cites the yuan's share of trading on the Moscow Exchange at 54% in May 2026, and Morgan data cited in sanctions research saying only about 5% of Russian oil exports are now settled in dollars, down from 55% before 2022. Russia sold yuan-denominated sovereign bonds in December 2025 (20 billion yuan, $2.9 billion) and May 2026 (10 billion yuan, $1.5 billion). Meanwhile the dollar's share of disclosed global reserves was 56.8% at the end of 2025, down from 70% in 2000.

The military and security dimension

The article argues Russia's defense ties with Asia have expanded since 2022: the first ASEAN-Russia naval exercise (ARNEX) in December 2025, the "Orruda 2026" Russia-Indonesia drill in July 2026, "Typhoon-2026" and "Laros-2026" with Laos, and Russia's co-chair role on the ADMM Plus humanitarian demining working group for 2024-2027. For the demining thread in particular, see Sweeps and Spies, where I examine the other side of that story.

My conclusion

The isolation story was a narrative, not a result. I read the data as showing that most of the world's population lives in countries that chose engagement. The article's closing line: "The isolation cage was built, but the door was left wide open." Read it for yourself and decide. The full reference list (Chatham House, IIF, Bloomberg, Reuters, TASS, Nikkei Asia and more) is at the end of the original.

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Cite this article

Turner, W. A. (2026). Eastern Economic Forum 2026: Is Russia Isolated?. The Ukraine Files. Infinitum Corporation. https://ukrainianfiles.blogspot.com/2026/10/eastern-economic-forum-2026-vladivostok.html

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By (ORCID 0009-0002-1585-5442), founder of Infinitum Corporation, Washington, DC, and the person who coined the term Corporate Cognitive Warfare: narrative strategy and cognitive dominance for companies, drawing on the established field of cognitive warfare. Contact: 202-729-9509 (Mon–Fri 9 AM–9 PM ET) · Telegram · Discord

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William Aaron Turner is President of Infinitum Corporation and author of The Ukraine Files. Follow on X, Telegram or join the Discord.

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