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Moscow’s Influence Wanes in Southeast Asia

Moscow’s influence in Southeast Asia is drastically waning.

<p>Russian President Vladimir Putin attends ASEAN summit via a video link at his residence outside Moscow, Russia, on October 28, 2021.</p>
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends ASEAN summit via a video link at his residence outside Moscow, Russia, on October 28, 2021. Sputnik/Evgeniy Paulin/Kremlin via Reuters

By experts and staff

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Experts

As President Vladimir Putin has increasingly tried to project Russian power around the globe in recent years, one of the areas it has focused on has been Southeast Asia. While Russia’s attempted influence in the region attracted less attention than its influence in Africa or Eastern Europe, Moscow had quietly become a much bigger military and diplomatic presence in Southeast Asia. Now, however, that influence seems to be dramatically fading, cutting Moscow out of a critical region of the globe. For more on how and why Moscow’s influence is waning in Southeast Asia, see my new World Politics Review article.