Unlike the Chinese, who have close dealings with the State Administration Council (SAC) while maintaining a certain distance from the generals so as not to further antagonize public opinion in Myanmar, the Russians have without hesitation thrown in their entire lot with the coupmakers in Naypyitaw. China has yet to invite the SAC leader, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, but he has visited Moscow on several occasions and met Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in Vladivostok in September 2022. Russia has sold helicopter gunships, jet fighters, armored vehicles, artillery and other military equipment to Myanmar, and thousands of Myanmar cadets have undergone training in Russia, while Russian military dignitaries in full uniform have attended March 27 Armed Forces celebrations in Naypyitaw.
More controversially, Russian military technicians are helping the Myanmar Air Force maintain its Russian-supplied aircraft, and, according to on-the-ground eyewitnesses, some are even assisting the Myanmar army in its drone warfare in Rakhine State, which may be the case in other warzones as well.
On the day before the Feb. 1, 2021 coup, a group of Russians and Myanmar colleagues were having a party in Yangon, where the vodka flowed freely. They were reportedly celebrating the opening of a military high-tech multimedia complex in which some of Min Aung Hlaing’s children had financial interests. It goes without saying that they also toasted the coup that was going to be launched the following day.
There is every reason for Beijing to play its cards carefully; it has vital, long-term geostrategic interests in Myanmar, the only neighboring country that provides China with direct access to the Indian Ocean. The Russians, on the other hand, have other concerns. Their friendship with Myanmar’s military should be understood first and foremost in the context of Putin’s vision of “making Russia great again.” Having lost its superpower status after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and the chaotic Boris Yeltsin years that ensued—and seen its once strong influence in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and close relationship with India diminish—the Kremlin leadership has found a new friend in Myanmar, whose generals have become its most trusted and faithful allies in Asia. As The Irrawaddy reported on June 26, 2021: “Min Aung Hlaing lauded Russia as Myanmar’s ‘friend forever’…[while] our neighboring China and India are our close friends.”
Key arms supplier
Wary of becoming too dependent on Myanmar’s powerful northern neighbor for military supplies, Naypyitaw has turned increasingly to Russia, which since the 2021 coup has displaced China as the country’s largest provider of defense-related material. According to a Nov. 21, 2023 research paper titled “Myanmar-Russia Relations Since the Coup: An Even Tighter Embrace” and written by Ian Storey for the Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, Russia provided Myanmar’s military with US$276 million worth of supplies between 2021 and 2022, compared to armaments valued at $156 million from China. A UN report states that Russian entities during the same period transferred US$406 million in defense supplies to Myanmar, with China at second place at US$267 million.
Significantly, the Myanmar military remains one of very few outside entities which has all along supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and is the only member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to do so. On Feb. 27, 2022, Myanmar Alin, the Burmese-language version of the Global New Light of Myanmar, published a two-page commentary titled “Lessons from Ukraine for those who haven’t learned from history” by a writer using the pseudonym “Myint Myat”. The article referred to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “puppet of the West”, while Putin was praised as a “visionary leader” who had had the “foresight to quietly build up his country’s military and economic strength.”
But there is an economic dimension to the partnership as well. Apart from Myanmar’s becoming a lucrative market for the Russian war industry, Russia has also shown interest in oil and gas exploration as well as mining in Myanmar. Playing “religious diplomacy,” one of the first Russian companies that became involved in Myanmar was one from Kalmykia, a Buddhist, autonomous republic in the European part of the Russian Federation. Russian website Kommersant carried an article on March 20, 2007 reporting that Kalmykia’s Kalmneftegaz “wins Myanmar’s Crude, Gas Tender on Religious Fellowship.” In another development, The New Light of Myanmar (before it became “The Global New Light”) reported on Feb. 16, 2008 that Myanmar’s Geological Survey and Mineral Exploration Department and a Russian company, Victorious Glory International, had signed a deal for exploration for “gold and associated minerals” in an area along the Uru River between Hpakant in Kachin State and Homalin in Sagaing Region. The newspaper gave no further details, but the Homalin area in the upper Chindwin River basin is known for its deposits of gold, while Hpakant is world-famous for its jade.
It is uncertain what became of those ventures and, given the fierce fighting that has broken out in precisely those regions since Min Aung Hlaing’s ill-fated 2021 coup, it is likely that they have been put on hold. Instead, it is Russia that has provided Myanmar with energy supplies. According to Storey: “Between March and June 2023, Russian oil exports to Myanmar jumped from almost nothing to 836 million barrels of oil.” A portion of that oil, the report states, “is likely to have been jet fuel for use by MAF (Myanmar Air Force) aircraft to conduct air strikes.” However, the research paper states, “not all Russian oil shipped to Myanmar is for domestic consumption. According to Energy Intelligence, from February 2023 Russia began delivering an estimated 70,000 barrels of oil per day to China using a Chinese-funded oil pipeline from the port of Kyaukphyu in Myanmar to Kunming in Yunnan Province.”
In August this year, Khin Yi, the chairman of the military’s own political outfit, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, said in an interview with the Russian news agency Sputnik: “The main support we would like is for Russia to work together with us in the fight against terrorism. To do this, we must first realize that what is happening [in Myanmar] must be perceived not as internal political squabbles, but as terrorism. If you recognize this as terrorism, then your departments and agencies that are engaged in the fight against terrorism can join us and together achieve our goals.” In effect, he asked for Russian intervention in Myanmar’s civil wars, which would violate even the Myanmar army-drafted 2008 constitution. Its Section 42 (b) stipulates that no foreign troops can be deployed in Myanmar. But, in a sense, that is already happening with Russian technicians working together with the Myanmar military in the maintenance of Russian-supplied jet fighters and helicopter gunships as well as in drone warfare. And in November 2023, the first Myanmar-Russia Maritime Security Exercise (MARUMEX) was held in the seas west of Myeik, Tanintharyi Region, involving ships and aircraft from both countries and focusing on the “prevention of air, water surface and underwater dangers and maritime security measures”, according to Myanmar’s military-controlled state media.
In the less lethal field, Russian Ambassador to Myanmar Iskander Azizov met the number two in the SAC, Vice Senior General Soe Win, in July to discuss the progress of Myanmar’s special economic zones and power projects. Russia is, reportedly, interested in investing in the deep-sea port at Tanintharyi’s Dawei in the southeast and, somewhat ironically given the volatile domestic situation in Myanmar, tourism in, among other areas, the beaches in Rakhine State.
Nuclear partnership
Russia and Myanmar have also agreed to cooperate in the field of nuclear power. In October 2023, Rosatom Director General Alexei Likhachev and the junta’s Science and Technology Minister Myo Thein Kyaw signed a memorandum of understanding which, according to Russian sources, “determines that the development of nuclear infrastructure will be carried out in accordance with the IAEA approaches and recommendations as well as Rosatom’s best practices.” (Rosatom is a Russian state corporation specializing in nuclear energy, while the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, is a global intergovernmental nuclear energy watchdog.) The memorandum also provides for training of Myanmar scientists and “human resources development and enhancement of safety culture in the organizations participating in the nuclear energy development program.” And then, in June this year, Moscow approved what Nuclear Engineering International, a monthly magazine published in the United Kingdom, called “a draft agreement on the basic principles of cooperation in the construction of a low-power nuclear power plant in Myanmar.” That seems to be the latest development in the long saga of nuclear cooperation between Russia and Myanmar, and it remains to be seen if it will ever materialize.
The Kremlin seems to believe that absolute military rule is there to stay in Naypyitaw and that Myanmar is not, as many independent analysts fear, on the verge of becoming a failed state. Russians have been spotted at several military bases and institutions in Myanmar, including Pyin Oo Lwin, the home of the Defense Services Academy and the Defense Services Technological Academy. But they may have been evacuated recently along with Myanmar personnel because of the fighting that is raging to the north and east of Pyin Oo Lwin. According to unconfirmed reports, however, seemingly optimistic Russian entities are still interested in mineral exploration in Myanmar’s more remote regions. Exactly what they are doing is not clear, but what can be said with certainty is that the SAC’s minister for natural resources and environmental conservation, Khin Maung Yi, received a Russian delegation headed by Anatoly Bulochnikov, senior vice-president of the Russia-Myanmar Association of Friendship and Cooperation, in Naypyitaw on June 28 last year. According to local media reports, they discussed development of the mineral sector and Russian technological assistance to Myanmar in mineral exploration. Furthermore, on Oct. 8 last year, a delegation from Fund RC Investments of Russia’s Roscongress Foundation also visited Naypyitaw, where they met SAC Energy Minister Ko Ko Lwin. The Russian guests reportedly pledged to provide technical assistance and investment for extracting natural gas trapped in coal deposits in Myanmar.
Even if military rule survives in one form or another, it seems shortsighted of the Russians to engage in such a close relationship with the junta—and for Myanmar generals to depend on Russia for business deals and military purchases. It is impossible under present circumstances to engage in any large-scale mineral exploration in Myanmar, and, even if Myanmar’s generals want to buy more military hardware from Russia, Moscow’s domestic needs for the war effort in Ukraine have made it harder for it to export weapons to any country, let alone a cash-strapped entity like the junta in Naypyitaw. But as long as the vodka flows, the friendship between the warmongers in Moscow and Naypyitaw seems solid. And there is precious little the outside world can do about it.
