Features of investment cooperation between Russia and Cambodia

The article is devoted to a comprehensive analysis of investment cooperation between Russia and Cambodia in the context of geo-economic transformations in the Asia-Pacific region. It focuses on the paradoxical gap between the declared political closeness of the two countries and their extremely low level of economic interaction. Despite Cambodia's strategic potential as an ASEAN member and its acute need for infrastructure modernization and economic diversification, mutual trade turnover remains insignificant, and the scale of Russian investments significantly lags behind the influence of China and ASEAN countries. The study identifies key barriers to cooperation, including Russia's lack of preferential access to the ASEAN market, structural imbalances in the Cambodian economy (high logistics and energy costs, raw material dependence of exports), fierce competition from regional players, and the unresolved issue of restructuring Cambodia's Soviet debt. The research is based on a comprehensive analysis of statistical data, an assessment of the effectiveness of current investment projects, and a comparative analysis of Cambodia's integration into ASEAN's global value chains and the institutional conditions for doing business. The scientific novelty of the study is determined by the comprehensive analysis of investment interactions in the context of Cambodia's asymmetric integration into ASEAN's global value chains, the assessment of the debt factor as a tool for converting obligations into joint projects, the identification of unique features of Russia's presence, as well as the proposal of an institutional model for interaction through the establishment of a bilateral business council focused on infrastructure projects as one of the bases for overcoming the existing "trust gap." Additionally, this article identifies unique competitive niches for Russian capital where it can be competitive despite the dominance of Asian and extra-regional players: construction and modernization of energy and transport infrastructure, implementation of deep processing technologies for agricultural products, development of renewable energy, and digital solutions.