Following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russia's cooperation with African countries in forestry and timber processing has become a strategic alternative to the Western markets lost to the sanctions imposed on it. Russia is seeking to position Africa not merely as an outlet market for timber, but also as a region in which to consolidate its influence through scientific and technical cooperation.
Science and diplomacy
After the complete ban on timber imports into the European Union and the United Kingdom (July 2022), Russia has redirected its logistics chains towards countries in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.
The Russians are also stepping up scientific and educational cooperation with African countries. As we have written previously (https://www.zemeunvalsts.lv/krievija-izmanto-mezsaimniecibu-lai-stiprinatu-diplomatiskas-un ), a Centre of Excellence for Forest Science and Education was opened in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 2025, the result of 18 months of prior cooperation. Its aim is to introduce Russian-developed carbon accounting models in African forests and, of course, to strengthen economic ties. Cooperation of this kind is being developed within the framework of the "Russia–Africa Partnership Forum", where the action plan for 2023–2026 provides for the targeted implementation of trade and environmental protection projects.
A distinctive approach to cooperation
The principal aim of this cooperation is to circumvent and offset Western sanctions. Russia is using new models of cooperation to reduce its isolation in the forest sector. Interestingly, there are reports of a special offer to the Africans, a so-called regime survival package (regime survival package), under which Russia offers assistance in the security sphere in exchange for access to strategic resources, timber among them. This characterises Russia's military and political offer to the leaders of African countries, particularly in the Sahel region – in Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and the Central African Republic. Russia offers direct military support, bodyguard services for heads of state and diplomatic protection, such as the use of its UN veto against Western pressure.
The Russians demand, and receive, appropriate payment for this assistance – Africa's natural resources. In exchange for security, Russia gains access to gold, uranium and lithium deposits and to logging concessions.
In the Central African Republic, for example, companies linked to the former Vagner group, now Africa Corps, have been granted extensive forest areas for logging, often in disregard of local environmental and resource-use laws. The timber obtained is exported to finance Russia's military operations. Forestry is being used as the "soft power" so familiar to us in the Baltics, with offers to help African countries carry out assessments on climate change adaptation and forest inventory.
Growth in the timber trade
Although Russia's total timber export volume fell by roughly 10% in 2024, for instance, compared with the previous year, individual segments are currently showing growth.
Egypt is currently one of Russia's largest trading partners in North Africa for sawn timber and plywood; on its own it purchases more than half a million cubic metres of timber. Other significant destinations for Russian timber are Iraq, Turkey and Jordan. Russian exports of forestry products to the MENA region – the Middle East and North Africa – are showing signs of stabilisation and moderate growth as Russia actively diversifies its markets beyond China. In 2025 the figure was in the region of 1.8–2.0 million m³. In 2024 Russia exported 1.7 million m³ of coniferous sawn timber to the region, and in the first half of 2025 a larger increase in volume was already apparent – of around 2%. Russia's total veneer exports to the MENA countries, meanwhile, reached approximately 0.4–0.5 million m³ in 2025. Russian veneer production reached 3.7 million m³ in 2025, of which around 45% is exported. The MENA region, and Egypt and Turkey in particular, has become one of the three most important destinations worldwide for Russian birch plywood, replacing the markets that were lost.
It should be stressed that veneer is the product most affected by Western sanctions, and so the MENA region serves Russia both as a direct outlet market and as a transit hub for the further "legalisation" of its output within global supply chains.
Logistics routes and sanctions evasion
In order to deliver timber to African markets and import the goods it needs, Russia has established new and fairly complex routes. In North Africa, Egypt and Morocco are used as transit hubs. Russian sawn timber is often transhipped in these countries, with the documentation altered to conceal its origin before onward distribution. There is a dedicated North–South corridor (INSTC). This is a route through Iran to the Indian Ocean that allows Russia to reach East African ports, such as those in Tanzania and Kenya, while avoiding European-controlled waters and the Suez Canal entirely.
Purpose-built black transit schemes have also been created, in which timber is exported via Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan, where it is issued with new certificates and passed off as produce of Central Asian origin, even finding its way back into European or other restricted markets. Extensive use is made of "shadow" tankers and cargo vessels registered in various exotic countries, in order to provide logistics without Western insurance and banking oversight.
The South African aspect
Relations between the Republic of South Africa (RSA) and Russia are a special case: both countries belong to the BRICS bloc, but in timber trading and nature conservation their relationship is characterised not by large volumes but by strategic and political cooperation. Unlike North Africa, the RSA is not among the largest buyers of Russian timber, yet new trends have been apparent since 2022. The RSA imports specific products from Russia, such as high-quality birch plywood and certain coniferous sawn timber, used in furniture manufacturing and construction. The RSA not infrequently serves as a logistical and financial "safety valve". Although direct trade is not extensive, South African infrastructure is used to service Russian transactions with other sub-Saharan African countries. Even so, Russian timber exports to the RSA rose by several tens of percent, as Russian companies are offering aggressive discounts in order to compete with local and South-East Asian suppliers.
In nature conservation and forestry, cooperation between the two countries is oriented more towards science and political influence than towards practical forestry. Both countries are working actively within BRICS to develop alternative forest carbon accounting standards. The aim is to secure international recognition of the capacity of Russian and South African forests to absorb CO₂, bypassing Western certification systems such as FSC, which, after a fairly lengthy "period of reflection", did after all leave Russia. In the context of 2025, cooperation is being strengthened between universities – the University of Pretoria and Russian forestry institutes, for example – on topics related to controlling forest fires and digital forest inventory.
Russia is using nature conservation to present the RSA as an ally in the fight against "Western green neocolonialism", meaning the imposition of Western environmental standards on African forestry and the timber trade. Because of the current international tensions, deliveries to South African ports – Cape Town and Durban – have become more expensive. Since vessels from Russia's Baltic Sea ports now more often choose the route around Africa rather than through the Suez Canal, South African ports are becoming important staging posts for the Russian fleet heading to Asia or to other African countries.
The influence of the "union of five states" is expanding
BRICS is a significant international organisation that initially brought together five countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and the Republic of South Africa. Following its enlargement in 2024, it has become an even more influential player in global politics and economics.
The place of the BRICS countries in forestry has become a substantial geopolitical instrument, used in particular by Russia and Brazil to push back against Western standards and sanctions. This cooperation is no longer purely economic – it has turned into a political platform in which forest resources are used as leverage against European Union environmental regulations.
The main political aspects of resource governance
The organisation aspires to become an alternative to the "Western order". The BRICS countries, which control roughly 33% of all the world's timber extraction, are building mutual models of cooperation in order to reduce their dependence on Western financial and certification systems. It is worth noting that forests can be used as this union's "carbon lever". The BRICS countries emphasise the importance of their natural ecosystems in carbon sequestration, seeking to have their forest resources recognised as a substantial contribution to meeting climate targets without additional economic restrictions from the EU. BRICS political rhetoric is often built on the principle of "internal governance", rejecting Western attempts to influence countries' management of their domestic resources through environmental standards.
Resistance to the European Union's environmental policy requirements
Europe's new regulations, and the Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) in particular, have provoked sharp resistance within the BRICS bloc. Brazil and Indonesia, which joined the bloc in 2025, regard the EUDR as a form of protectionism and a threat to their exports. After the largest international certification systems, such as FSC, suspended their operations in Russia and Belarus, work is under way within BRICS on its own "green" standardisation and carbon accounting systems in order to circumvent Western restrictions. While Europe demands strict traceability and proof of "zero deforestation", the BRICS countries are calling for more flexible, self-defined sustainability criteria.
Russia is using its status as the country with the world's largest forest areas to soften the impact of sanctions and strengthen its influence in the "global South". During its BRICS presidency in 2024, Russia placed particular emphasis on the need for independent payment and standardisation systems, which would have a direct bearing on trade in forest products free of the US dollar or European banking oversight.
BRICS is not living up to Russian hopes
Russia's relations with the BRICS countries resemble an attempt to build a modern fortress on "loose foundations" made up of widely differing interests. For years Moscow has positioned the bloc as its principal diplomatic shield against the West, hoping it would become an alternative centre of power in which Russia could play the leading role; in reality, though, these hopes come up against harsh geopolitical realities time and again.
One of the biggest "stumbling blocks" for Russian policy is the payments system. After being cut off from SWIFT, Moscow staked its bets on the creation of a single BRICS currency, or at least an independent payments platform. At the 2024 Kazan summit this topic was a priority, but the outcome proved very, very modest indeed. India and Brazil, which have close economic ties with the United States and Europe, are unwilling to risk "secondary sanctions"; they prefer to settle in national currencies, which suits their own economies but does nothing to help Russia build a global financial architecture wholly insulated from the West.
Nor has Russia managed to make BRICS into a single political fist. While Moscow would like to see the bloc as an "anti-Western" union, the other member states, China above all, prefer a "non-Western" position. That means they want to expand their influence without severing ties with the existing world order. This rift comes to light whenever the war in Ukraine is mentioned: BRICS declarations usually confine themselves to general calls for peace rather than giving Russia the open support it so badly craves.
The organisation's enlargement, too, has turned out to be a double-edged sword for Russia. On the one hand, the accession of new member states such as Iran or Ethiopia creates an impression of growing global influence. On the other, the more members the organisation has with involvements in various conflicts and with starkly differing economies, the harder it is for Moscow to reach any consensus at all. Russia's voice in this ever-larger chorus is growing quieter, and its economic dependence on China obliges it to settle for the role of "younger brother", which sits ill with the Kremlin's ambitions of greatness.
Ultimately, Russia's strategic failure lies in the fact that it saw BRICS as its own personal political instrument, while the other member states view it as a pragmatic platform for defending their national interests. Hopes for the bloc as a monolithic counterweight to the West have so far remained at the level of rhetoric and symbolic photographs...