Western sanctions imposed on the Russian energy, defense and financial sectors exposed the country’s severe dependence on foreign goods and technology. As a response, the Russian government introduced an import substitution programme aimed at creating domestic capabilities to safeguard the country’s economic and technological sovereignty. After five years, Russia’s import substitution has failed to achieve tangible results. Due to the lack of domestic capabilities, poor inter-sectoral cooperation and rent-seeking, the progress on substitution has been protracted and weighed down by uncompetitive prices and low quality. Gradually, import diversification to non-Western states has replaced the strategy of developing domestic analogues. Russia’s pivot to Asia proved to be instrumental in supplanting Western imports and localising foreign technology. The talk will explore the ways in which Asian states alleviated the impact of sanctions and mitigated the costs.  

Speaker: