The Philippine government was always deeply suspicious of the Soviet Union because of Moscow's ideological support for communist insurgents. Marcos sometimes dispatched his wife to Moscow, but only for the purpose of reminding Washington that there were alternatives to exclusive reliance on the West for aid. Soviet Communist Party general secretary Leonid Brezhnev reciprocated by voicing support of Manila in opposition to the Communist Party of the Philippines and the New People's Army. The government of Mikhail Gorbachev was embarrassed by its own diplomatic clumsiness in dispatching the sole foreign ambassador to attend Marcos's pitiful final inauguration on February 25, 1986, but it later opened cautious diplomatic dialogue with the Aquino government and promised to continue to refuse support to the Communist Party of the Philippines and its New People's Army. In 1988 Moscow played on the Philippine-United States bases controversy by offering to pull out from Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam in return for United States withdrawal from Clark and Subic bases, an initiative that withered on the vine. In 1991 the Moscow hoped to acquire access to Philippine ports and dockyards for its fishing fleet as a result of warmer relations with Manila.

Data as of June 1991