Russia's Investment Envoy: Beijing is Moscow's 'Most Powerful Strategic Partner'

Beijing stands as Moscow’s “most powerful strategic partner,” with Russia’s massive natural reserves and cheap energy making it a perfect fit for cooperation in artificial intelligence development, Kremlin investment envoy Kirill Dmitriev has said.

Speaking to journalists at Tsinghua University in Beijing on Tuesday, Dmitriev, who heads the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), said that Russia and China maintain “a comprehensive investment partnership.”

“Russia has a number of very strong competitive advantages” as it is “a leader in the world in terms of resource reserves” and “can provide the cheapest energy for artificial intelligence in the world,” he said. “We communicate with Chinese partners on projects in the fields of AI, logistics, and infrastructure.”

Speaking to Tsinghua University students on Tuesday, Dmitriev estimated that Russia could fuel AI development and operation ten times cheaper than any other source.

“Russia’s and China’s partnership in AI achieved an amazing result… We all follow the DeepSeek revolution,” he said. The Chinese-developed model blew up the AI scene after it released its bot assistant app last January, providing performance on par with premium US models for free or at a fraction of the cost.

“It was a smarter, more intelligent, more efficient way to think about AI,” including regarding “open sourcing models,” he said. DeepSeek “broke the monopoly of some of the countries who tried to create technology monopoly,” he said.

China and the Global South are now the drivers of global growth, but certain nations are still “not willing to give up constructs that they have to protect their position,” Dmitriev added.