MOSCOW — These days, those who want to talk to Vladimir Putin come to him. But on Friday, it’s the Russian president’s turn to make a move.
He’s traveled east to Beijing, away from the West and a dangerous who-blinks-first standoff over Ukraine.
There, he may find a helping hand from Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Winter Olympics opening ceremony, which most Western leaders have boycotted. Xi’s government has shown solidarity with Russia’s gripes about the West, bought up some Russian fossil fuels and joined forces in an effort to weaken the power of the U.S. dollar.
Realistically, though, Putin won’t find a full-fledged solution to protect Russia from the strident sanctions Western allies have promised to impose should the Kremlin send troops across the Ukrainian border.
While Western sanctions imposed on Russia over its annexation of Crimea in 2014 have encouraged Russia to pivot toward China, leading to new energy deals and increased bilateral trade, Beijing has maintained a business-like stance.
“China is a market player,” said Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “There’s only so much it’ll do to help out their Russian friends while still protecting its own interests.”
It is also unlikely Putin will receive any direct advice on the Ukraine crisis.
“Beijing is following what is happening between Russia and the West closely, but it is unimaginable that it would give its special input, not to talk about a blessing,” Fyodor Lukyanov, a foreign policy analyst close to the Kremlin, told POLITICO.
Friday’s meeting has echoes of the past.
In 2008, too, scores of Western leaders boycotted the Beijing Summer Olympics over China’s human rights record.
And then, too, Putin was among those who attended. But his stay was cut short when, during the opening ceremony, a territorial dispute between Russia and neighbor Georgia, which had aspirations to join NATO, flared up into a hot war.
In the words of propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov on Russian state TV: “These days feel like déjà vu.”
Since those Olympics, Russia has scrambled its way back to the top of the world’s geopolitical agenda through a series of military ventures abroad and repression at home, despite reprimands from the West.
Such finger-pointing is not part of the Sino-Russian relationship.
When Putin and Xi talk Friday, human rights aren’t likely to be on the agenda. No mention from Xi of the poisoning and incarceration of Alexei Navalny. Nothing from Putin about China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims and activists in Hong Kong.
The two countries share a rapport based on their authoritarian ruling styles, complementary economies and the ambition to undermine America’s global dominance in favor of a “multipolar order.”
In an interview with Chinese state media on Thursday, Putin referred to his relationship with Xi as that of “good friends and statesmen who share many views on solving world problems.”
While several analysts stressed that Putin’s trip to Beijing is mainly meant as a chance to reconnect with Xi after a two-year COVID hiatus, the timing inevitably sends a powerful signal about China’s willingness to act as a shock absorber for possible Western sanctions on Moscow.
When it comes to financial tools, technology and energy deals, China, which is Russia’s largest trading partner, can lend Moscow a hand.
China said bilateral trade with Russia reached $140 billion last year, more than double the amount in 2015, right after the West hit Russia with penalties over its annexation of Crimea.
Then, support came from China in the form of agreements to build the Power of Siberia natural gas pipeline, which opened in 2019, and to partly finance the Yamal liquified natural gas facility, which skirted U.S. sanctions on gas producer Novatek.
For fuel-hungry China, it was a great bargain. For Russia, which bore most of the cost, it helped the country diversify into a new market. But its importance was mostly symbolic.
“It demonstrated to the world that Putin was not internationally isolated,” said Dr. Erica Downs, senior research scholar at the SIPA Center on Global Energy Policy of Columbia University, during a recent Carnegie Moscow Center event.
During the upcoming talks with Xi, the announcement of even non-binding agreements would have “a similar effect,” she said.
Turning words into action
On the soapbox, China appears already to have sided with Russia. A readout of a phone call between China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi and his U.S. counterpart cites the Chinese official defending Russia’s “legitimate security concerns.”
Аnd during a United Nations Security Council meeting earlier this week, the two countries appeared to speak in one voice.
“China has moved closer rhetorically to Russia than before,” said Gabuev of the Carnegie Moscow Center.
Yet analysts warn as long as there is no actual war or further sanctions, paying diplomatic lip service to Russia’s cause comes cheap for China.
How this will translate into action is a different question altogether.
For China, sanctions could provide a business opportunity and increase its sway over Russia, whose economy is 11 times smaller.
But “given the economic interests of Chinese companies in Europe, [Beijing] does not wish to increase conflict here, and its appeal is to all actors on whom effective European security arrangements depend,” said Igor Denisov, a senior research fellow at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.
If the past is any guide, both in 2008 and 2014, the Chinese adopted the position of a concerned but neutral bystander. Continuing to do business with Russia, yes, but certainly not cutting it an easy deal.
“In 2014, there were those in Moscow who had these naive expectations that Russia would turn its back on Europe, and China would fill the void,” said Gabuev. “But it led to disappointment.”
If Russia’s economy is in a better place to withstand sanctions today than it was in 2014, it is primarily due to domestic fiscal measures. China comes in second, Gabuev said.
Progress on joint attempts to reduce dependence on Western currencies is slow. In 2020, only 5.7 percent of the total volume of Russian-Chinese payments was in rubles. And as of yet, China and Russia’s homegrown payment systems are no alternative to SWIFT, the primary system used to move money around the world. To give an indication, only one Chinese bank has joined Russia’s SWIFT alternative, SPFS.
Compared to 2014, Russia today is more clear-eyed when it comes to what it can expect from Beijing, Gabuev said: “The formula is: not always with each other, but never against each other.”
In the United States, the two countries have a common enemy. But even without that, the dynamic between Russia and China follows a logic of its own, said Denisov.
The two share a more than four thousand kilometer-long border and a turbulent shared past, which the two leaders seem happy to have put to rest.
“The lessons of history have been learned, both sides are equally reluctant to confront each other and, at the same time, do not intend to create a military alliance that would severely limit their freedom to maneuver,” said Denisov.
Seen from Moscow, “what is happening around Ukraine fits within the traditional Russia-West framework, the last battle of the Cold War of the 20th century,” said Lukyanov, the foreign policy analyst.
“It is important for Russia, pretty important for the West, and informative, even instructive for China,” he added. “But it is not China’s business, and for Russia, it is enough that China remains positively neutral.”
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