The establishment of the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO) in Shanghai on July 16, 2026, provides Russia and China with a new institutional framework for technological cooperation. The organization brings together 29 founding members—mostly non-democratic regimes from the Global South—to provide Beijing with another institutional platform for shaping an alternative to Western AI cooperation and governance.
The more consequential question for Moscow, however, is not participation in another multilateral technology forum, but whether AI can become a new pillar of bilateral economic interdependence with an economically and technologically stronger, and demographically larger, neighbor. Russian commentary points toward a prospective ‘division of labor’ intended to compensate for Moscow’s disadvantages vis-à-vis China. Namely, MTS Web Services CEO Pavel Voronin argued that in the scope of this “AI Alliance” Russia could provide Russian-language and sector-specific training data and expertise in industry, energy, finance, science, education, and public administration, while China can offer model architectures, computing resources, equipment, and training technologies.
Leverage Through Infrastructure
This proposition reflects Russia’s technological limitations vis-à-vis China: for instance, InfoWatch President Natalya Kasperskaya has argued that Russia is unlikely to catch the United States or China in large foundational models and should concentrate its scarce resources on applied AI instead. In other words, Moscow has an incentive to seek leverage in the physical infrastructure underlying AI, and this asymmetry helps explain the growing Russian focus on Siberia and the Far East, where Moscow’s potential contribution to an “AI alliance” could take the form of physical inputs on which large-scale computing increasingly depends: electricity, land, cooling, fiber connectivity, and geographically distributed data-center capacity. Indeed, Siberia and the Far East offer substantial hydroelectric resources and a cold climate that can reduce cooling costs. Russia is effectively seeking to convert these factors into a higher-value export (computational capacity) and bind part of Chinese demand to Russian territory and power systems, creating a new form of infrastructure interdependence.
Additionally, for Moscow, locating compute capacity east of the Urals supports a broader effort to redirect infrastructure and investment toward its Asian-facing regions that have historically suffered from geographic distance, thin markets, and population outflow. Clearly, data centers alone will not reverse those structural problems, but they can anchor power, telecommunications, engineering, and cloud-service investment around existing industrial centers. This makes AI infrastructure attractive as an instrument of territorial development as well as foreign economic policy. For Moscow, AI infrastructure could therefore serve three objectives simultaneously: developing Russia’s eastern regions, strengthening their economic integration with Asian markets, and fostering interdependence with China.
This operational model has clear precedents: the first steps in this direction occurred well before the current AI boom. For example, in 2015, Russia’s En+ Group discussed Siberian data-center cooperation with Huawei, targeting approximately $5 billion in Chinese investment over five years. By September 2015, En+, Huawei, LANIT, Centrin Data Systems, and Irkutsk regional authorities signed a framework agreement in Beijing for a major Irkutsk Oblast data center. In May 2017, En+ launched the first module of its “Clouds of Siberia” (Oblaka Sibiri) network at the Novo-Irkutsk CHP plant. En+ said the facility would serve Russian and Chinese customers and highlighted two advantages: company-supplied electricity and year-round natural cooling. It estimated that electricity accounts for 50–70 percent of cloud-processing costs and noted it was considering additional projects with Russian and Chinese partners.
The significance of these earlier projects lies less in their scale than in the model they anticipated: converting Siberia’s inexpensive electricity and climatic advantages into data-processing capacity partly oriented toward meeting Chinese demand. What is new in 2026 is the convergence of this older infrastructure logic with rapidly expanding AI-related compute demand. MTS and China Mobile International signed a memorandum to establish a new cross-border internet route – as of now the route is planned rather than already completed – at Pogranichny–Suifenhe using DWDM equipment capable of 48 channels at 200 Gbit/s each. If completed, the project would strengthen the digital backbone required for cross-border cloud and compute services.
Seeking AI Capacity in the East
Russia is simultaneously building domestic AI capacity in the east, which (as of now) should not be treated as direct evidence of Chinese participation. Rather, it should be interpreted as a sign that Moscow was preparing the necessary infrastructure for the purpose of attracting Chinese interest. The specific steps include:
· On August 19, Sakha (Yakutia) disclosed plans for a Far Eastern AI cluster based on a new data center.
· On August 31, it was reported that En+ affiliate Cloud X is constructing a 154-megawatt AI/cloud data center near the Ust-Ilimsk hydroelectric plant, targeted for launch in May 2029 and envisioned as the first of three facilities totaling roughly 462 MW.
Importantly, a recent study by the Stolypin Institute argues that Eastern Siberia could support 150–200 MW-class facilities and potentially develop data infrastructure into an export industry. Taken together, these developments suggest that Russia is expanding the supply side of a prospective AI-compute relationship before corresponding Chinese demand has been publicly demonstrated. Political signaling is also intensifying. At a recent Russia–China session in Beijing (August 12), officials and companies discussed cooperation in AI, e-commerce, and the green economy; the following day, a Chinese delegation visited the Russky Innovation Science and Technology Center in Vladivostok to discuss links with Chinese technology clusters.
Outlook
For the time being no publicly confirmed Chinese company has committed capital or long-term compute demand to the new Russian-backed Siberian AI projects. However, the absence of commitments points to a deeper structural problem for Moscow. From a purely economic and technological perspective, China does not need Russian territory to expand its domestic AI-compute capacity. Beijing’s nationwide “East Data, West Computing” (东数西算) program, formally launched in February 2022, already shifts suitable workloads toward western and northern regions with abundant land, massive renewable energy, favorable climate, and extensive domestic fiber. Regions such as Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Ningxia, Sichuan, Guizhou already offer many of the same advantages while remaining inside Chinese jurisdiction and purview. Consequently, China already possesses domestic substitutes for most of the physical advantages Russia is offering. It also maintains a detailed regulatory regime for cross-border transfers of personal and important data, adding compliance friction to any model that relies on moving sensitive datasets into Russia which could become a matter of vulnerability for China should relations between Moscow and Beijing change their current vector.
This creates a tactical contradiction for Moscow. If Chinese companies eventually commit substantial AI workloads to Siberia, their participation would validate Russian efforts to convert energy and geography into digital leverage. Paradoxically, it could also deepen Russia’s technological dependence on China. Russian companies could provide electricity, land, cooling, and physical infrastructure while Chinese partners supply advanced computing hardware, networking equipment, model architectures, cloud technologies, and potentially the anchor demand determining the facilities’ commercial viability. Russia could therefore capture part of the infrastructure rent while remaining dependent on China for higher-value technological inputs and customers. This also raises the question as to why Beijing would place substantial compute capacity in Russia when comparable domestic locations are already available. Any eventual Chinese investment would therefore merit scrutiny for actual Chinese motivations—such as expanding its data and technological footprint in Russia—extending well beyond basic economic considerations
In sum, the energy constraint ultimately limits Moscow’s leverage. Siberian electricity consumption rose 4.7 percent in 2024, with data centers, mining, and industry contributing to demand growth. If no additional electricity production powers enter into the picture, AI facilities would start competing with (and potentially cannibalizing) aluminum production, cryptocurrency mining, electrification, and other industrial loads for low-cost power. The strategic question is therefore not whether Siberia can host AI data centers – it almost certainly can – but who would control the hardware, demand, data, and economic rents generated by them. The emerging pattern is best understood as a Russian attempt to convert Siberia’s traditional resource geography into digital leverage. Ultimately, the decisive indicator will be a prominent Chinese firm committing capital, equipment, or contracted compute capacity to Russian facilities. Until then, Moscow continues to build the infrastructure for strategic interdependence faster than Beijing can demonstrate it requires it.
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