There were great expectations preceding the Vladimir Putin-Xi Jinping summit last week that their meeting in Moscow would see them announce Xi’s brokering of peace between Ukraine and Russia, based on a peace plan that China published last month. However, nothing of that sort happened. The Chinese plan had called for peace talks and although it stressed on respect for national sovereignty, it did not make an explicit call for Russia to vacate occupied Ukrainian territories. At a joint news conference after their meeting, Putin said that “many provisions of the Chinese peace plan can be taken as the basis for settling the conflict in Ukraine, whenever the West and Kyiv are ready for it.” In essence, he threw the ball into the court of Ukraine and the West and gave no indication that he was ready to initiate talks. Indeed, in the days since the Putin-Xi summit, there are signs that Russia intends to prolong, or even escalate, the war.
The objective of the Putin-Xi summit was not to find Russia a way out of the war. Instead, it was to cement the Russia-China relationship. The meeting was an opportunity for the two self-described “friends” to display their personal rapport and their alignment on an array of areas, especially their deep distrust of the US. They signed over a dozen agreements boosting cooperation in trade and technology. The affirmation of Russia-China cooperation in energy and food security, development of rail and other cross-border logistics infrastructure as well as rouble-yuan trade comes amid renewed attempts by the US to isolate Russia by imposing sanctions. Russia-China trade has grown by almost 20 per cent this year.
While the recent Putin-Xi summit signalled a reaffirmation of the strong relationship between the two countries, the partnership is increasingly not one between equals. Russia’s reliance on China for both imports and exports has grown phenomenally, especially since its war on Ukraine. And although Beijing has not condemned Russia on its invasion of Ukraine, it has not provided it with lethal military aid, or rather, no evidence has emerged of direct military support to Russia. So, while Beijing is on the Russian side against the West in the war in Ukraine, the crisis is helping China rise at the cost of Russia. China’s leverage over Russia has grown further, following the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Putin over alleged war crimes in Ukraine.