A “Good” Samaritan? The Geopolitics of Russia’s Covid-19 Assistance

Between March and December of 2020, more than three dozen states received various types of COVID-19 assistance from Moscow. The Russian government emphasized a humanitarian character of what has become the largest package of emergency aid since Russia’s independence. The Western governments and commentators cautioned that Moscow had strategic and nefarious motives in choosing the recipients of its coronavirus aid. This study theorizes humanitarian aid allocations by authoritarian states and tests theoretical expectations using novel data on Russia’s COVID-19 aid allocations. Far from being driven by humanitarian concerns, Russia has used humanitarian assistance for projecting power on the global stage and supporting diverse political objectives. Moscow’s use of humanitarian aid for geopolitical benefits has not been a critical disruptor in the humanitarian system by itself. However, jointly with other instruments of foreign policy, Russia’s approaches to humanitarianism can be detrimental to the future of the international humanitarian system.