Do Pakistan-Russia Ties Have a Future?

In early December 2022, upon his return from a short visit to Moscow, Pakistan’s petroleum minister, Musadik Malik, surprised the public with an announcement that Russia would provide Pakistan with crude oil and diesel at a discounted price. Musadik also confirmed a Russian invitation to start talks over the supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Pakistan, which could begin in 2025 or 2026. 

Many in Pakistan believed that energy ties with Moscow could really develop this time, after many false starts. Following the announcement, various Pakistani officials told national and international media that Pakistan was all set to start purchasing 4.3 million tonnes of oil from Russia to help meet its annual demand and consumption of 19.92 million tonnes of oil and diesel. 

Musadik pointed out that buying energy from Russia was necessary since Pakistan’s energy supplies need to rise by 8 to 10 percent to meet its target growth rate of 5 to 6 percent. There is no denying that Pakistan could use cheap energy resources from Russia to revive its economy, which has been struggling to gain momentum for the past five years. Pakistan is now on the verge of a default, as the country’s foreign exchange reserves fell to just $4.5 billion in the second week of January, barely enough for three weeks of imports.

The euphoria over using cheap energy from Russia to revive Pakistan’s struggling economy turned out to be very short-lived, however. 

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari shot it down during his visit to the United States in mid-December 2022. In his engagement with the U.S. media during his visit, Bhutto confirmed that Pakistan was neither “pursuing [n]or receiving any discounted energy [from Russia],” adding that Pakistan was exploring various possible options to meet its energy demands. Bhutto also confirmed that Russian supplies could not materialize immediately, as energy ties with Moscow, he said, “will take a long time for us to develop.” 

In simple words, Bhutto killed any possibility of an immediate energy trade with Russia.

Bhutto’s statement came within a week of Musadik’s visit to Moscow. That the foreign minister downplayed the possibility of Pakistan receiving energy supplies from Russia so quickly shows that Musadik was not able to achieve anything beyond a conversation to begin a conversation around Russian supplies. 

Even though a Russian delegate recently visited Pakistan to “explore” business opportunities in the energy sector, this has turned out to be another round of “talks about talks.” The major outcome was that Pakistan and Russia decided to discuss energy cooperation again in March. This is in addition to other ambiguities surrounding the ongoing talks, including questions about the currency to be used to make payments to Moscow.

As diplomatic and political sources in Pakistan told The Diplomat, Pakistan’s inability to make a swift deal with Russia is due to the ongoing economic crisis. Pakistan’s only hope to avoid a default is the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which is dominated by the United States.

In this context, Bhutto’s statement also shows the importance that Islamabad, despite facing existential choices to revive its economy, continues to attach to its ties with Washington. Bhutto’s confirmation that Pakistan was not even pursuing energy ties with Russia in fact reinforces the U.S. strategy to strangle the Russian economy by restricting its ability to sell oil and gas. Pakistan does not intend to antagonize Washington when the latter is – and can be – a critical source of financial help. 

In fact, in July 2022 when Pakistan was facing an increased risk of default, Pakistan’s then-Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa personally requested Washington push the IMF for an early release of $1.2 billion. Pakistan did eventually get the money, tying Islamabad even more deeply to Washington in the global geopolitical scenario, which is being rapidly shaped by the conflict in Ukraine. 

The current trajectory of ties further demonstrates that former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s crucial visit to Moscow on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022 was motivated not by any strategic shift in Islamabad’s foreign policy from the West to the East, but mainly by the Khan regime’s own bad ties with the Biden administration in Washington. 

Despite Pakistan’s various efforts, U.S. President Joe Biden had no contact with Imran Khan during the latter’s tenure, which ended abruptly in April 2022. One of the crucial reasons for this state of affairs was Khan’s support for the Afghan Taliban, as he hailed their “victory” and congratulated them for breaking the “chains of slavery” upon their takeover of Kabul in August 2021.

But despite Khan’s visit to Moscow, the Pakistani foreign policy and security establishment showed little inclination to deliberately thumb its nose at Washington. Bajwa told an audience at a security conference held in Islamabad in early April that Pakistan’s ties with the United States were “excellent.” He also reminded his audience that the best equipment that the Pakistan military has is made in America, and that the United States remains Pakistan’s largest export market as well. 

On the contrary, Pakistan’s trade ties with Russia are very modest. Consider this: In 2020, Pakistan was merely the 63rd largest market for Russian exports, according to World Bank and IMF estimates. That same year, Russia was only the 27th largest market for Pakistani goods. Pakistan buys mostly agricultural products from Russia. Wheat and legumes make up nearly 80 percent of Russian exports to Pakistan. In exchange, Russia imports modest quantities of textiles (55 percent of Pakistan’s overall exports to Russia) and citrus (20 percent), along with other odds and ends. 

While the two countries do have trade ties, the nature and depth of their economic relationship is not of a magnitude that provides any kind of long-term strategic value.

In contrast, Bajwa’s statement made it explicitly clear why Pakistan’s ties with the United States are crucial – and why ties with Russia cannot serve as a replacement.

As a retired lieutenant general of the Pakistan Army told The Diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, “We prefer the U.S. when it comes to military hardware and foreign policy in general.” 

Under the current circumstances, it also matters which of Pakistan’s partners has sufficient resources at its disposal to help Islamabad avoid potential default. Unlike the United States, Russia does not have any capacity to influence the IMF for loans.

The affirmation of Pakistan’s ties with the United States came from the army chief himself. This was a signal that Islamabad’s foreign policy – which is overshadowed by the security establishment – did not undergo any significant changes, even under the Khan government. As Bhutto’s most recent statement showed, Pakistan’s foreign policy is quite likely to remain unchanged in the near future as well. 

This is also evident from the fact that Pakistan has already found sources of additional gas supplies other than Russia. Pakistan’s petroleum minister recently confirmed that Islamabad is going to buy gas from Azerbaijan.

Strategic considerations aside, Pakistan also lacks the necessary infrastructure to receive and store Russian gas. Pakistan’s two currently operating LNG terminals do not have the capacity to process additional gas from Russia, and the construction of two new LNG terminals is far from complete.

Although Russia has proposed to supply gas via the Central Asian route, using pipelines, Pakistan is yet to build the necessary 1,100-kilometer-long North-South gas pipeline. The planned pipeline would connect the port city of Karachi to the city of Kasur in Punjab. But this pipeline – which was agreed upon in principle back in 2015 – has been delayed by the fact that the Russian companies involved in its construction were hit by U.S. sanctions. 

In addition, the project’s estimated cost is over $3 billion. While 26 percent of this project is to be financed by Moscow, the remaining 74 percent is supposed to be funded by Islamabad. Given the current economic scenario in Pakistan, it is highly unlikely that Islamabad can divert enough resources to start building this particular pipeline in the near future. 

Given Pakistan’s dependence on the IMF loan program, it is unlikely that Islamabad would even have the option to utilize available funds to build this particular gas pipeline. As policymakers in Islamabad confirmed, the energy crisis notwithstanding, there are “multiple reasons” why Islamabad is “not keen to build this pipeline” – or, one a deeper level, pursue strategic ties with Moscow.

A Troubled History of Bilateral Ties

This lack of appetite to deepen ties with Moscow is reinforced by the history of Pakistan’s bilateral ties with Russia and the Soviet Union. In 1949-50, when Moscow invited Pakistan’s first prime minister on a state visit, Pakistan decided to decline, accepting Washington’s invitation instead. This decision left a deep imprint on the subsequent trajectory of Pakistan’s ties with the Soviet Union. 

Pakistan became Washington’s frontline ally against communism. It even provided its airbases to the United States during the Cold War, which the U.S. military used to spy on the Soviet Union. The famous U-2 plane that the Soviets shot down near the city of Yekaterinburg (then called Sverdlovsk) in 1960 had flown from an airbase in Peshawar, Pakistan. In the 1980s, Pakistan was at the forefront of the U.S.-sponsored war on the Soviet Union waged in Afghanistan.

Given that history, why does Pakistan even seek to (re)build ties with Moscow?

The answer lies in the fact that Pakistan’s overtures to Moscow happened at a time when Islamabad’s ties with the United States had turned sour. For instance, Khan visited Moscow at a time when the Biden administration was not happy with the Khan government’s Afghanistan policy and its perceived failure to get the U.S. a better deal to end the war. The situation changed after Khan’s exit from power, as Islamabad initiated a course of action to repair its ties with Washington – a policy evident from Bhutto’s repeated visits to the United States last year. 

What really underscores the pro-U.S. trajectory of Pakistan's foreign policy is the fact that Bhutto is yet to visit Moscow.

Pakistan’s positioning between Russia and the United States is also underpinned by broader strategic reasons pertaining to the South Asian region. Since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, Washington has been (unsuccessfully) trying to convince India to take a pro-West position. India’s refusal has somewhat negatively impacted New Delhi’s ties with Washington, as the former not only continues to buy Russian oil but has increased its purchases as well. 

Islamabad sees this scenario as an opportunity to reinforce its importance for the United States as its most crucial ally in South Asia.

To this end, Pakistan has been sending humanitarian aid to Ukraine since 2022. Some media reports recently suggested that Pakistan might send ammunition for the Ukrainian army as well. If it turns out to be true, the move to send military equipment to Ukraine will only reinforce Pakistan’s pro-U.S. policy.

Islamabad views defending its status as a key ally of the United States as important also because of the growing threat of terrorism from Afghanistan, where the Afghan Taliban’s support for the banned Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP, also known as the Pakistani Taliban) has allowed the latter to regroup and restart its war on Pakistan. Islamabad is currently weighing its options, and as it stands, it sees Washington, rather than Moscow, as a crucial source of support against religious terrorism.

Given the deterioration in Pakistan’s ties with the Afghan Taliban, Islamabad now increasingly shares Washington’s concerns about the Taliban’s deliberate move away from the commitments the group made with the U.S. in the 2020 Doha pact – commitments that involved eliminating all terror groups and not allowing any group to use Afghan territory to attack any other country. 

As opposed to Moscow – which has gradually, but cautiously, developed ties with the Afghan Taliban – Islamabad has reasons to calibrate with the United States to contain the Taliban threat. This, in fact, is already happening, as Washington recently designated the TTP as a global terror group, reinforcing Pakistan’s claim that the presence of the TTP in Afghanistan violates the Doha pact.

There are, therefore, historical, strategic, economic and geopolitical reasons for Islamabad to prefer ties with the Washington over Moscow. The United States is far better placed than Russia to help Pakistan cope with the immediate danger of default and tackle the emerging threat of terrorism. 

As it stands, policymakers in Islamabad have been devising ways to engineer a new anti-terror partnership with Washington, according to comments made to The Diplomat. They think the prospects for yet another military and intelligence alliance are very bright – and that of energy ties with Moscow bleak.