Russian economist Yaroslav Lissovolik outlines how the SCO is becoming the economic backbone of Greater Eurasia and a key platform for BRICS+ and the Global South.
Economist Yaroslav Lissovolik knows the architecture of the global financial system from the inside. He entered the market in the late 1990s at Renaissance Capital, then Russia’s leading investment bank, and from there moved to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), where he served as an adviser to Russian Executive Director Alexei Mozhin—before the age of 30, he was already seated at the table of the Executive Board. Educated at Harvard, the London School of Economics, and the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), he co-authored with his supervisor one of the first comprehensive books on Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO).
This process shaped his worldview. Russia took almost 20 years to join the WTO: China acceded in 2001, Moscow only in 2012. He recalls how the process was experienced in Russia: “You think you have already made all possible concessions, and then another round of concessions emerges that you have to make. One more, then another, every year.” The country had been transformed into a radically liberalized economy, and yet the door to the Western club remained closed. “Anyone familiar with this issue would understand the tremendous degree of frustration that had been accumulating year after year,” he says.
After the IMF came Deutsche Bank, where he served as Chief Economist for Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) for about a decade—a period in which it was still believed possible to build economic bridges between the West and Russia, and which ended with Crimea in 2014. This was followed by roles at the Development Bank of the Eurasian Economic Union and Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, where he headed investment research.
This trajectory from the global to the regional and then to the national level produced his central thesis. “At the time I was at the IMF, I thought everything should be top-down, resolved by global institutions and passed down to lower levels,” he says. “That way of thinking changed when I became part of a regional institution. I began to think of regional blocs as the foundations of a reformed global economy. Because with these global organizations, it’s almost like a colossus resting on very fragile foundations,” he explains in an exclusive interview with Brasil de Fato.
In 2023, he founded Brics+ Analytics, a consultancy dedicated to producing proposals for the bloc and the Global South. It was he who, in 2017, published the article that launched the R5 concept—the idea of using the national currencies of the five BRICS countries in the operations of the New Development Bank (NDB) and regional banks—the seed of all subsequent debate on a common currency.
The interview with Brasil de Fato was conducted on September 2, ten days before the BRICS summit in New Delhi (India) and one day after the conclusion of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan).
Brasil de Fato: Last week, we had the SCO summit in Bishkek. The organization has been gaining prominence, and President Vladimir Putin emphasized that Russia’s trade with the group reached $400 billion, with 98% in local currencies. Is the SCO transitioning into an economic platform? What is your assessment of the summit?
Yaroslav Lissovolik: You are right to highlight the SCO’s key vector, which is the bloc’s evolution toward becoming an economic bloc. It began with a strong emphasis on security, for understandable reasons at the time, 25 years ago, and today the economic needs are enormous. Each year, there was a growing recognition of the limitations faced by regional economies in terms of economic integration and trade.
For this reason, the economic imperative began to become more pronounced, and this was reflected in last year’s developments, including discussions on a development bank. When you begin to see institutionalization, which provides something more rules-based, predictable, and viable, you start to observe greater engagement from the economic community, the investment community, and the markets.
Therefore, I am not overly concerned about the fact that there may not have been as much progress this year regarding the bank. There are many issues to decide. It is better to devote a bit more time and not make mistakes right at the outset. And I think one of the key questions may be the headquarters location [Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan have offered to host the bank].
I am a strong proponent of geographically diversifying institutions, as far as possible. Of moving away from this Western pattern in which one or two cities represent all of global governance, so that all regions of the world begin to represent it. It is about time. This is an issue that is on the radar, being discussed, and there will certainly be progress.
Twenty-eight agreements were signed at the summit. Which ones stood out to you in the final declaration?
There were references to work on the financial system, that is, payments in national currencies. And mentions of connectivity projects related to major corridors. The most important here would be the North–South Corridor.
I was very optimistic to see in the list of adopted documents the members’ roadmaps on projects, project portfolios, and connectivity. All of this is beginning to become systemic and project-based—something less rhetorical, more concrete, more grounded in real projects.
As for trade, the standard remains, as in BRICS+, the emphasis on bilateral agreements, in which two countries agree on a certain trade target and work to implement it. This is the case for Russia, Brazil, and practically everyone. Achieving higher levels through this instrument is perfectly acceptable; it seems to work and generate results. But a faster path would be a roadmap of trade agreements brought together into common platforms, resulting in a much more systematic and predictable instrument.
My preference is for a roadmap of trade agreements in an “SCO+” format, which would encompass not only full members but also partners and observers, as well as Eurasian integration and regional blocs such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). There is this format that is becoming more evident—China plus GCC, China plus ASEAN—and that could very well be integrated into an SCO+ framework.
The long-term vision that is crystallizing is SCO+ as the Eurasian platform for Global South cooperation, bringing together all the major actors and serving as a platform for aggregating development institutions, integration blocs, and connectivity projects.
You pointed to connectivity as one of the two key issues on the economic front and highlighted the North–South Corridor among the projects in the declaration. This corridor links the port of Mumbai to Iran and continues to St. Petersburg by rail and navigation on the Caspian Sea, significantly shortening the route that today passes through the Suez Canal. It involves exactly three countries that are at both tables: Russia, Iran, and India are members of both the SCO and BRICS. What does this mean to you?
What it means is that it is quite possible for the two to work together. We have seen that the NDB has been co-financing projects with regional banks, such as the Development Bank of the Eurasian Economic Union. This could very well happen with the SCO bank as soon as it becomes operational. The SCO definitely needs to be involved in the North–South Corridor, because the issue of alternative trade routes is the crucial link that could also connect, to a greater degree, the SCO to BRICS+.
Today, four countries are full members of both blocs: Russia, China, Iran, and India. If we consider partners, observers, and other categories, there are eleven countries at both tables.
That is very good. They are bridges, ways to connect and expand. If previously overlaps were thought to be duplication and a problem, no: this is positive for the Global South in terms of expanding projects and platforms.
Overlap improves the prospects for forming platforms among regional integration agreements—such as the Beams platform I proposed, which brings together the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC), the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), the African Continental Free Trade Area, Mercosur, and the SCO itself. You build a house with “BRICS and Beams”: they are the two key elements [in English, “bricks” are tijolos and “beams” are vigas]. Time will tell, but we are moving, slowly but surely, toward a paradigm in which it is not just individual countries, but regional blocs, that become the building material for these platforms.
And the SCO will be the backbone, the absolutely crucial link of this entire grand project they call Greater Eurasia. I would call it SCO+.
Originally published on Brasil de Fato by Marco Fernandes: https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2026/09/09/ocx-sera-espinha-dorsal-da-grande-eurasia-diz-economista-russo-idealizador-da-moeda-comum-do-brics/
The version in English was published by Think BRICS: https://thinkbrics.substack.com/p/the-sco-will-be-the-backbone-of-greater