Latest updates, insights, and analysis.
The Russian Sovereign Wealth Fund is prepared to offer Namibia financing options for development projects in the country, as a delegation led by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Trutnev visits Windhoek. Russian businesses are interested in Namibia’s energy, advanced technology, the mining industry, petrochemicals, financial and agricultural sectors.
Russian and Ghanaian officials have been meeting in Accra to discuss bilateral trade as well as the coming 3rd Russia-Africa summit, which is scheduled to be held in Ghana later in the year. Ghana is a primary member of the African Union and the African Continental Free Trade Agreement. Ghana-Russia trade has tripled in the past three years.
The Russian Defense Minister, Andrei Belousov, has been visiting Togo to discuss military and security cooperation. The country provides access to the volatile Sahel region, and also provides a West African Port of strategic interesst to the Russian Navy.
Russia’s Rosatom has signed an MoU with South Africa’s Nuclear Energy Corporation as regards expanding the generation capacity of its Koeberg NPP and look at developing additional NPP without the country. South Africa has the only NPP in the African continent yet is suffering from blackouts and a lack of electricity,
The Iran conflict has cut off Europe from its normal Southeast Asian aviation routes, yet Russia has been able to call on regional members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, BRICS, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, as well as its new Asian diplomatic strategy, to reroute flights to the east and use Eurasian connectivity to access Southeast Asian tourist destinations. This move could ultimately open up new transport hubs in Central Asia to service these markets in problems persist in the Middle East.
A Moscow regional court has ruled in favour of US Domino’s Pizza after a Russian national got tattooed with their logo and won a competition to have free Domino’s Pizza for 100 years. The company pulled out of the Russian market in 2023 and bankrupted their local franchisee. We explain the upholding of international legal protocols by Russia in this unusual case.
South Korea is poised to join the Trans-Arctic Corridor and work with Rosatom on using the Northern Sea Route for trade with Russia and Europe, according to Rosatom’s CEO. Rosatom provide nuclear-powered icebreaker services across the Russian Arctic.
As we predicted would happen, shortages created by the Iran conflict are starting to spill over into other industrial areas. A shortage of aluminium is now affected the Japanese auto industry, with carmakers turning to Russia’s Rusal to obtain supplies as their usual Middle East manufacturing supply chains are inoperable.
Russia’s exports of agricultural products to Turkiye rose 9% during 2025 to reach US$3.8 billion in value and 12 million tonnes in weight. Primary exports in this category include wheat, sunflower oil, bran, legumes, oilseed cake, rice, flaxseed, molasses and barley, all of which showed significant increases
Russia became the top supplier to China of vegetable cooking oils in the last agricultural year, with exports up 16% over the previous 12 months. The global market has increased demand for Russian rapeseed oil, partially due to a worsening situation with imported canola supplies to China due to an ongoing China-Canada trade conflict, and the sluggish pace of Australian raw material arriving at Chinese oil mills as an alternative procurement channel
Israel has bombed the Russian Culture Centre in Lebanon, flattening the building. No-one was in the building at the time of its collapse. Moscow has called the attack an “unprovoked act of aggression”.
A study of the Chinese National People’s Congress 2026-30 budget, just released, reveals that China intends to fast-track the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline from Russia and expedite increasing LNG supplies as soon as possible. The move comes as a stabilizing factor in China’s energy security as they look for alternatives to supplies from the Middle East. This will likely mean that Russia will replace Qatar as China’s primary LNG source.
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