Isolation and Alignment: Russia’s Relations with Pariah States After 2022

• Commentary Russia, Caucasus and Central Asia
  by Eleonora Tafuro Ambrosetti
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As the Kremlin faces unprecedented sanctions, cooperation with other isolated regimes has increased. These ties highlight both Russia's constraints and its attempt to build new geopolitical leverage.

What is a pariah state? The term is widely used in media and policy language; yet, there is no precise juridical definition of what being a pariah state entails. Academically, a pariah state is defined as a country whose domestic or international behaviour seriously offends the world community or at least a significant group of states, thereby increasing the risk of isolation, sanctions or punitive responses. Violation of international norms can span across massive human rights abuses, terrorism support, weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferation, lack of democracy, exporting revolution and military aggression.

Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine could certainly be listed as a serious violation of international law which did indeed provoke "unprecedented" measures to punish and isolate the aggressor. These measures aimed at turning Russia - at least in the intentions of most Western policymakers - into a pariah state. While Russia today is the world's most-sanctioned state, Moscow is no stranger to isolation and containment. As Alastair Kocho-Williams notes, "looking back over the last 100 years, it's clear that the period between 1992 and 2001, when Russia embraced the West and was largely embraced by it, is the exception. For most of the 20th century and the early 21st century, Russia has been a fearsome power that the West has wanted to hobble".

While there is intense debate over the effectiveness of these measures and the true extent of Moscow's isolation - and thus over Russia's actual pariah status - one point is clear: the fallout from the war is pushing Russia to invest more in building or strengthening ties with non-Western countries, particularly with certain pariah states. This is the starting premise of this dossier, which examines Russia's relationships with several pariah states after 2022. Events such as the fall of Syria's Bashar al-Assad, the ousting of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro and the two US-Israeli strikes on Iran, with potential regime change looming, make this analysis increasingly relevant. In all these cases, Moscow has maintained a low-profile - sometimes even passive - stance, limiting itself to statements condemning military operations in Venezuela and Iran or sheltering the fleeing Syrian leader in Moscow. Overall, observing how Russia either adapts to or minimally responds to the decline of its partners and allies provides insights into both Moscow's pragmatism and the constraints imposed by its own war in Ukraine. Moreover, the following four key points emerge from the analysis.

Some inter-pariah solidarity - and some instrumentalisation

Despite limited Russian responses in Syria, Venezuela and Iran, some inter-pariah solidarity played out - even if largely at the rhetorical level. Moscow strongly condemned both US-Israeli strikes against Iran and reportedly shared intelligence with Teheran to target US forces in the Middle East. The Kremlin has also criticised the US operation in Venezuela, which resulted in Nicolas Maduro's ousting, describing it as an "act of armed aggression". Even if Russian officials and Kremlin-aligned media refrained from criticising US president Trump directly, they used the attacks against Iran and Venezuela as examples reinforcing their long-standing critique against Western double standards and unilateralism.

Opposition to sanctions is a case in point. Russia often cites sanctions as an unfair and asymmetrical tool that the West uses to coerce and obstruct other countries - often failing to mention that Moscow also used sanctions as foreign policy tool on several occasions, for example in controversies with Turkey or Georgia. During a meeting with Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez at the Kremlin on 18 February 2026, Russian President Vladimir Putin criticised new US restrictions on Cuba as "unacceptable", declaring "You know how we feel about this. We do not accept anything like this."

Russia's discourse on sanctions aims to boost the sense of victimhood and attract consensus for de-dollarisation and other strategies to strip the US of its dominant position in world trade. The aim is to create alternative trade blocs less exposed to US influence. This is evident even in cases where Russia does business with very small economies, like North Korea. As Heekyong Chang recalls in her article for this dossier, ahead of his June 2024 visit to Pyongyang, Putin outlined plans for Russia and North Korea to develop an alternative Eurasian trade and security framework beyond Western influence - a partnership estimated to generate about $20bn in economic gains for North Korea.

Moscow needs help for its war effort

A particular type of solidarity Moscow has received since 2022 from most pariah states cited in this dossier is support for its war machine in Ukraine. This has translated into weapons and ammunition transfers as well as soldiers fighting at the front on Russia's side. States like North Korea, Iran, Belarus - from which the "special military operation" was launched - are particularly important in this sense. From the Iranian Shahed drones, which are now produced mainly in Russia, to North Korean soldiers fighting off Ukrainians in Russia's Kursk region and, reportedly, also in Ukraine. Yet, there have been reports of foreign fighters coming from other pariah states like Cuba, Mali and CAR. Russian-language media report that between 1,000 and 5,000 Cuban citizens have fought on Russia's side in Ukraine since 2022, with some estimates placing the figure as high as 10,000. Such involvement would echoe a Cold War precedent, when the Soviet Union relied on Cuban forces as proxies in conflicts across the developing world. At the same time, it is hard to assess the level of complicity of the governments of the states where these fighters come from. In the case of African fighters, there have been many reports denouncing how Russia is exploiting a complex network of social media influencers, travel agents and intermediaries to entice Africans with promises of high-paying jobs, scholarships, travel and even passports or citizenship - without these people necessarily understanding what they are committing to.

The Ukraine war is changing trade patterns, but "pariahness" is not a key factor

Research shows that the imposition of sanctions can drastically reshape some states' trading networks, as states either seek new partners or feel the impact of restrictions from key trading partners. Russia indeed pivoted to East, looking increasingly to China as a trading partner, since the EU and the US imposed the 2014 sanctions for the annexation of Crimea. After 2022, Moscow has also increased trade with Indo-Pacific, African and Middle Eastern partners, also as a way to circumvent sanctions and make up for the loss of the EU as an energy market. However, trade patterns with the pariah countries analysed in this dossier reveal that while trade links increased (see Belarus, Iran and Syria), in most cases they remain very focused on arms sales (like in the Burmese or Iranian cases) and - although key to Russia's war effort - they are of relatively little importance to Russia's economy overall. This is because Russia has turned to bigger and energy-hungry economies like China's or India's to compensate for the partial loss of the Western markets and because these countries do not abide by Western sanctions.

The war on Ukraine is changing the power balance in some relations

The start of Russia's war in Ukraine and Moscow's consequent "pariah status" shifted the power balance in several bilateral relationships analysed in this dossier. In some cases, the ties remain deeply asymmetric (e.g., Myanmar, Belarus, Mali, CAR), but the war and Moscow's need for new partners have reignited its engagement with these countries. Where a partner (such as Iran or North Korea) contributed significantly to Russia's war effort, the balance has shifted slightly away from Moscow. An interesting outlier is Syria, where the pariah status - as Chiara Lovotti notes - had very little impact: relations between Damascus and Moscow are shaped by historical ties and long-standing interests that transcend the isolation both countries experienced. Similarly, just as Syria's exit from isolation followed the fall of Bashar al-Assad, regime change in other pariah states - from Iran to Cuba, from Belarus to Myanmar - would likely reshape their ties with Moscow.