Igor Denisov
To understand Russia’s current views on China’s Belt and Road, first of all, we need to comprehend the background of “conjugation” between BRI and the Russia-initiated Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), which was first mentioned in the joint Russian-Chinese statement of 2015.
While defining Moscow’s response to BRI, the Russian side was considering the ambiguity and inconsistency of this initiative. The main task was to find out China’s intentions and coordinate them with Russian own interests. It was difficult to figure out China’s intentions, as from the very beginning the Chinese definitions of the “belt” and “road” were vague, and the scope of the initiative was determined literally on the fly. It took almost a year and a half from after the launch of BRI to the announcement of the first BRI-focused conceptual paper, which was still very general.
Although from the very beginning, the Chinese official documents on BRI were mentioning the concepts of co-development and unification of efforts of the Eurasian countries in their common interest of a successful economic recovery, China’s BRI was still based on the idea of Chinese financing of individual projects and exports of excess production capacity in the framework of already established bilateral relations. In a sense, BRI became a “testing ground” on which Beijing was going to improve its leadership capabilities in Eurasia and create a “belt” of friendly states, “fastened” around Chinese investments and technologies, and, in the long term, China’s political interests.
This posed a certain danger to the future of Eurasian integration, as the initiative shifted the attention of the key Russia’s partners in Eurasia exclusively to China. Moreover, some Chinese experts in their works criticized the Russian concept of “Eurasian integration”, assessing it as a “short-sighted and narrow project,” and exaggerating its political component. All this was creating the basis for an aggravated competition between Russia and China in Eurasia. The meeting of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping on May 8, 2015 in Moscow became an important turning point to avoid this scenario.
Despite the fact that the document signed as a result of that meeting is a bilateral document on “pairing” of the construction of the EAEU and BRI (the Silk Road Economic Belt at that time), it set the agenda for the BRI-related interaction between the EAEU and China. The Russian leadership expressed official support for the Chinese initiative, while China not only sympathized with the Russian interests in promoting further integration in the post-Soviet space, but also obliged to enter into negotiations with the EAEU on trade and economic cooperation.
Since then, Russia’s position has not changed. Russia has not formally joined BRI, is not a member of a “China-centric community”, but it cooperates with Beijing on an equal footing as one of the EAEU members. Meanwhile, China, while formally accepting the idea of cooperation with the EAEU (where Russia de-facto plays the main role), tends to developing relations with the other members of the EAEU on a bilateral basis. This, in its turn, undermines Russia’s position. There are certain problems for Russia, as it is difficult to find a right balance between the common interests within EAEU and the interests of its member-states. Each of the latter has own “views” on cooperation with China.
Igor Denisov is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for International Studies, Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), MFA of Russia. He tweets at @Igor_Denisov.
BRI Research 
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