Russia's Military Expansion: Implications for Bangladesh and Non-Aligned Nations

The Country That Stayed Quiet When a Russian Missile Hit Its Ship

In the first days of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a Russian missile struck a Bangladeshi cargo ship docked at a Ukrainian port. The crew survived. Bangladesh's response was silence. No condemnation. No formal protest. No public statement from Dhaka demanding accountability from Moscow for hitting a vessel flying the Bangladesh flag in a war Bangladesh had nothing to do with.

That silence was a foreign policy position. It was carefully calculated, diplomatically deliberate, and entirely consistent with the approach Bangladesh has maintained throughout the Russia-Ukraine conflict — an approach that reflects both the country's long-standing non-alignment tradition and the specific economic entanglements that make outright condemnation of Russia too costly for Dhaka to risk.

Understanding why Bangladesh stayed quiet, and what Russia's ongoing military expansion means for countries like Bangladesh that have chosen non-alignment in a world that is increasingly demanding sides, is one of the more consequential geopolitical questions of the current period.

The Rooppur Nuclear Plant — $12 Billion Worth of Complicated

The single largest factor shaping Bangladesh's relationship with Russia is not ideology, historical affinity, or military alliance. It is concrete and steel in Pabna district: the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant, Bangladesh's first nuclear facility, built by Russia's state nuclear corporation Rosatom at a total cost of approximately $12.65 billion. The overwhelming majority of that cost is financed through Russian state loans — meaning Bangladesh owes Moscow roughly $12 billion, to be repaid over decades, for a project that has not yet generated a single kilowatt of electricity.

The plant has faced significant delays. Unit 1 completion, originally projected for 2024, has been pushed to December 2026. Unit 2, projected for 2025, is now expected in December 2027. An estimated Tk 113,000 crore — approximately $9.5 billion — in investments sits stalled as of late 2025. Then, in December 2024, Bangladesh's Anti-Corruption Commission launched a probe into allegations of embezzlement exceeding $5 billion in the Rooppur project, implicating former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and associates in alleged siphoning of funds through offshore accounts and inflated procurement costs. Rosatom denied wrongdoing. The investigation continues.

For a country that has staked this much political capital, borrowed this much money, and tied this much of its energy security future to a single Russian project, the calculation around how loudly to criticize Russian military aggression becomes obvious. Bangladesh is not in a position to simply walk away from the Rooppur relationship, even if it wanted to.

Non-Alignment Under Pressure

Bangladesh's foreign policy has historically been built around the principle of non-alignment — maintaining functional relationships with all major powers rather than joining any bloc, avoiding entanglement in great-power conflicts, and prioritizing economic relationships over ideological positioning. This approach served Bangladesh reasonably well through the Cold War and the post-Cold War period. In the current environment, it is under the most sustained pressure it has faced in decades.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine forced every country in the world to make visible choices. Voting in UN General Assembly resolutions condemning the invasion, abstaining, or supporting Russia — each choice carried diplomatic consequences. Bangladesh consistently abstained or avoided direct condemnation language in multilateral forums. It barred sanctioned Russian vessels from its ports — a compliance with Western financial systems that it could not avoid — while simultaneously continuing engagement on the Rooppur project and other bilateral cooperation.

This balancing act is genuinely difficult to maintain. Foreign Policy described Bangladesh as a "battleground" between the US and Russia, as both powers actively sought to pull Dhaka toward their positions. Russia's criticism of Western pressure on Bangladesh resonated with parts of the Bangladeshi political establishment that had grown frustrated with Western human rights criticism of the Hasina government. The US, meanwhile, was pushing Bangladesh toward its Indo-Pacific framework and away from closer alignment with both Russia and China.

August 2024 and the Reset

The political upheaval of August 2024 — the mass protests that ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and brought Muhammad Yunus's interim government to power — created a significant inflection point in Bangladesh's relationship with Russia. Hasina had been Moscow's primary interlocutor in Dhaka, having personally traveled to Moscow and authorized both the Rooppur deal and purchases of Russian military equipment during her tenure. Her departure removed the political relationship's most important node.

Russia's initial response was characteristic of its approach to political transitions in partner countries: the Russian Ambassador described the situation as Bangladesh's "internal matter" and expressed readiness to work with any government. At the BRICS summit in October 2024, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabakov backed Bangladesh's potential entry into BRICS and pledged to advance "matured" relations. Moscow appointed a new Ambassador to Bangladesh in October 2024, though Dhaka had not yet reciprocated by withdrawing its own ambassador.

At the military level, the relationship continued. Bangladesh Army Chief General Waker-Uz-Zaman traveled to Moscow in April 2025 for a working meeting with Russian Deputy Defense Minister Colonel General Alexander Fomin to discuss defense cooperation. In September 2025, a Bangladesh Army contingent participated in Russia's international joint strategic exercise "West-2025" in Nizhny Novgorod. Both sides publicly described the military relationship as warm and ongoing.

The Quiet Pivot West

Beneath the surface of continued official engagement, Bangladesh's defense establishment has been making different calculations. Analysis of Bangladesh's defense procurement and partnership trajectory shows the army initiating a reorientation away from Russian military hardware — driven partly by the Ukraine war's disruption of Russian defense supply chains, concerns about spare parts availability, and Russia's limited willingness to permit meaningful technology transfer.

Western suppliers are increasingly seen as offering better terms: greater interoperability with international peacekeeping operations where Bangladesh is among the world's largest troop contributors, better lifecycle support, and selective technology cooperation that supports Bangladesh's stated goal of developing indigenous defense manufacturing capacity. The post-Hasina defense review has accelerated this shift, as procurement decisions made under the previous political leadership are being reassessed.

This creates a genuine tension in Bangladesh's Russia policy. The official relationship at the diplomatic and military-to-military level has remained functional and even warm. The practical defense procurement direction is moving away from Russian platforms. Bangladesh is simultaneously participating in Russian military exercises and quietly reducing Russian hardware dependency.

What Russia's Expansion Means for Non-Aligned Nations Broadly

Bangladesh's situation is not unique. Across the Global South — from Mali, which welcomed Russian Wagner fighters and is now navigating the consequences, to the various African states that have experimented with Russian security partnerships — countries that chose non-alignment or closer Russian engagement are facing a version of the same calculation.

Russia's military expansion has not made it a more reliable partner for developing nations. The Ukraine war has disrupted Russian weapons supply chains globally, delayed delivery of contracted military equipment, complicated payment mechanisms through Western financial sanctions, and raised serious questions about the long-term sustainability of Russian defense partnerships for countries that depend on continued parts supply and technical support. The Mali youth who supported Russian fighter deployment in 2021 — the context from which this article's redirect originates — are now living in a country that has experienced significant security deterioration despite, or arguably because of, Russian military presence.

For Bangladesh specifically, the combination of the Rooppur nuclear dependency, ongoing military-to-military engagement, and the simultaneous quiet pivot toward Western defense partners creates a foreign policy posture that is genuinely difficult to sustain as great-power competition intensifies. Staying genuinely non-aligned when both the US and Russia are actively competing for influence, when economic entanglements pull in one direction and security modernization pulls in another, requires a level of diplomatic sophistication that demands constant active management.

The Path Forward

Bangladesh's interest in BRICS membership — supported by Russia at the October 2024 summit — reflects Dhaka's desire to maintain access to non-Western multilateral frameworks even as its defense posture gradually aligns more closely with Western standards. This dual-track approach is coherent as a short-term strategy. Over a longer time horizon, as the global order continues to bifurcate between US-aligned and China-Russia-aligned blocs, the space for genuine non-alignment may continue to narrow.

For a country whose economic future depends heavily on preferential access to EU markets, whose largest military contributor role in UN peacekeeping requires interoperability with Western-standard equipment, and whose most significant infrastructure project ties it to Russian financing, Bangladesh is navigating genuine strategic complexity — not as a passive recipient of great-power decisions, but as a country with real interests of its own that do not map neatly onto either side of the emerging global divide.

The ship that was hit by a Russian missile in 2022 was repaired. Bangladesh stayed quiet. Both facts remain relevant to understanding where Dhaka stands in a world where Russia's military expansion has made neutrality harder to maintain — and more necessary than ever for a country that cannot afford to lose access to either side of the divide.

win-tk.org is a wintk publication — covering Bangladesh's geopolitics, security, and international relations through analytical journalism.