VICTORIA, Seychelles, Seychelles made one of its most visible appearances at a Russian forum in recent memory this week when Minister for Investment, Entrepreneurship and Industry Geralda Desaubin led a delegation to INNOPROM, the international industrial exhibition held each year in Yekaterinburg.
📷 Photo: Russian President Vladimir Putin with President of the Republic of Seychelles Patrick Herminie, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
The visit followed a personal invitation from Russian Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade Alexei Gruzdev and came just under three months after Seychelles President Patrick Herminie travelled to Moscow for talks with President Vladimir Putin on 19 April 2026.
Speaking from Yekaterinburg, Minister Desaubin said the visit sat within a wider push by the Herminie administration to broaden Seychelles’ industrial partnerships beyond its traditional European suppliers, particularly into Russia, the United Arab Emirates and South Africa. The three-country corridor, she noted, was a deliberate response to what she called “the architecture of a multipolar industrial partnership” during a high-level panel discussion on the future of manufacturing cooperation.
INNOPROM, which has run annually since 2010 at the Ekaterinburg-Expo congress centre, draws around thirty national delegations each year along with major Russian industrial groups such as Rosneft, Sberbank and VSMPO-AVISMA. The 2026 edition, the fifteenth staging of the fair, was held in early July and focused on industrial autonomy and supply-chain resilience in a fragmented global economy.
For Seychelles, a small island state with limited heavy industry, the relevance of an industrial fair sits less in factory contracts and more in access. The delegation used the visit to engage Russian officials and counterparts from several other participating countries on potential cooperation in port logistics, blue economy supply chains and the digital infrastructure that underpins modern customs and trade systems.
The trade relationship between Seychelles and Russia remains modest by absolute volume. Bilateral trade in 2008 totalled around US$6.23 million, with Russian exports dominated by mineral oils and machinery and Seychelles’ exports to Russia made up of fish, seafood and spices, according to historical figures cited in the Russia-Seychelles relations overview. The latest visit is intended to widen that base.
Diplomatic and ceremonial ties have deepened alongside the trade track. In June 2026, Russian servicemen from the 154th Preobrazhensky Independent Commandant’s Regiment marched in the military parade at Unity Stadium marking the 50th anniversary of Seychelles’ independence, a gesture that officials in Victoria read as a sign of Moscow’s intent to keep the relationship visible.
The Seychelles delegation is expected to brief Cabinet on the outcomes of the visit when ministers return to Victoria, with a focus on which of the conversations opened in Yekaterinburg can be turned into signed memoranda within the current financial year.
Sources cited: INNOPROM exhibition, Wikipedia. Russia-Seychelles relations, Wikipedia. Seychelles, Wikipedia.
Source: SN
