Russia-China relations “turning sour” as Putin “embarrasses” Xi | Roger Boyes

Russia-China relations “turning sour” as Putin “embarrasses” Xi | Roger Boyes

the days when Russia was a an unbeatable military force that that had to be ayed and listen to uh a f disappearing his standing would disappear the use of a nuclear weapon is not a sign of strength it’s a sign of weakness I’m Roger boy I’m the times diplomatic editor and I write a weekly uh foreign policy column for the newspaper the Limitless friendship was agreed uh supposed was agreed just before the Invasion the Russian invasion of Ukraine and so uh it it naturally changed this whole pledge uh extremely unusual really to for two countries to to make that kind of commitment not even I don’t know France and Germany after the second world war in this massive reconciliation that happened after 1945 not even they went that far as to say Limitless friendship uh so the question was how Limitless is Limitless uh does it mean um that uh Does it include deep military uh Alliance does it mean diplomatic support does it mean economic assistance in a crisis so all these questions were unspoken uh but then Russia proceeded to invade Ukraine and suddenly the terms about friendship were put to the test um and what we’ve been seeing over the last uh months of uh initially uh uh a shocking surprising attack on Ukraine followed by um all sorts of setbacks for Russia uh and then setbacks for Ukraine um what we’ve been seen is a test of patience really on the part of China how long can this the terms of this friendship be left IL defined and vague um um and my thesis anyway is that this uh this friendship um is turning sour um uh it’s turning sour for two reasons one is that Russia is getting fed up with being uh essentially demoted to be junior partner of China and it’s turning sour because China itself signed up for something that it didn’t expect it signed up for a quick War uh um which it imagined and was promised by Putin that it would be in Ukraine um and uh and an essentially incompetent uh uh in many respects Russian army um which is an embarrassment for its senior Alliance partner China the most useful part of this Chinese Russ ran uh Alliance or Axis or however you want to describe it has been um the restraint that China has put on Russia’s use of nuclear weapons in the conflict first of all because uh xiin ping imagined uh that the war against Ukraine would be a fast territorial War perhaps involving the displacement of the galansky government um the fall of Kev um a surrender uh a uh and perhaps some kind of uh dismantling of of Ukraine uh all of which China was more or less in favor of uh or at least didn’t have any fundamental objections to um but it’s it’s main objection um its main objections came apparent When The War lengthened um and the longer the war went on the more Putin started to threaten the use of tactical nuclear weapons or uh Battlefield nuclear weapons or uh anyway some uh some kind of absolute escalatory measure that might in turn uh endanger China’s own position as a nuclear power the last thing China wanted was for the invasion of Ukraine to become part of a wider East West um conflict that then spread uh globally um and and so uh it’s noticeable that Russia or Putin in particular has tried to be restrained now about uh using tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield and uh and one assumes that this restraint uh which is not heard in within the Russian Elite which is quite hawkish uh has come from China’s uh uh interventions diplomatic interventions China is worried about a nuclear war on its borders uh and uh it’s it’s worried that it will get sucked into that conflict it’s worried about destabilizing the China Russian border it’s worried that America will turn will become more aggressive towards China and uh and any Ambitions China has against Taiwan it there’s no way that China can win from the Russian use of nuclear weapons and um and China is making this increasingly clear um China doesn’t want Russia to lose this war um uh it wanted the war to be quicker uh it wanted it to have a more cleancut end um and it didn’t want the war to spread to China and all of those calculations uh fed into the decision to help uh uh put in in different ways on the whole um this help has not been military um uh although there are signs that it might be turning more military um it’s uh Russia for example has been running short of ammunition um China has plenty of ammunition but what happened was that North Korea supplied and filled the Gap uh with uh lots of shells uh and uh and Rockets that could be used on the battlefield North Korea might have been acting on behalf of China this is possible um but China’s main assistance has been diplomatic uh it’s given uh Russia uh flanking support in the United Nations and in uh on in many uh International forums um it has but above all it has given uh Putin an economic Lifeline um uh essentially uh Western strategy has involved um um curbing um and capping the amount of oil that Russia can export um to the world but China which is growing not as fast as before but still quite fast is uh is a natural customer for oil Russian oil and gas and in that way has kept Russia’s Balance Books healthy enough for Russia itself to invest in a war economy and carry on um with a third year of War this is China’s main contribution um but there are other um less uh less public uh interventions by China uh including there’s cooperation between the Chinese and Russian intelligence Services um there’s plenty of uh leverage that China can give Russia in inside the global South as to say the various uh supposedly nonaligned or non-committed countries that um that uh now regularly vote against um uh or or refuse to vote to condemn uh the Russian invasion so so it’s it’s a very intricate um Alliance that could in in my opinion still go quite badly wrong well the first real sign of of dissension is that um the big project that was supposed to seal this Limitless friendship was uh a gas par line which fed gas from Siberian gas from uh Russia uh from Siberia uh into the Chinese expanding Chinese market um now China has been saying uh we don’t want to pay you uh above the odds for this oil or for this gas um and uh has in fact been demanding discounts from Russia so this this is a sign that um that China considers itself to be the senior partner in this relationship with Russia it’s uh and it’s it’s a sign that troubles Putin uh and it troubles above all Putin’s critics within within the Kremlin uh so all this is now beginning to play out and it’s beginning to play out on International fora so the NATO Summit is one moment when uh it will it will become clear what to do uh what to do about continuing to supply uh weapons to the ukrainians um that that has been the main um the main plank of support by the West to Ukraine the supply of weapons increasingly Advanced weapons uh not just ammunition not just uh um you know at the beginning of the war it was helmets it was gas masks it was these kind of things now we’re talking about really serious weapons and uh some of which can uh reach Russian territory um they’re now entering Ukraine and they will be used over the next few months um and the NATO Summit will decide coming up in July will decide whether this is a policy that should be expanded stuck to and what level of Confrontation the West can risk um when um Ukrainian when when Western weapons Supply to Ukraine destroy Russian bases within Russia um in in oldfashioned terms this would be a declaration of war or at least an uh at least an act of War um um this is then when China must make its Choice does it want to be Allied to uh to Russia that’s in a virtual state of war with NATO uh or does it want to use the opportunity to be a peace broker or to at least pretend to be a peace broker um uh giving Ukraine and Russia a path to uh separate from each other and detoxify the crisis um I think this issue is still being discussed in China uh in the Chinese Elite um its natural preference is to stay with Russia for as long as possible but there’s plenty of arguments now for saying get out of this um there was an opportunity recently to uh attend a peace conference organized in Switzerland CH China chose not to attend um and uh it chose not to attend out of loyalty to Putin uh but this uh is a holding maneuver and China could yet spring its own surprise on the world not an invasion but um uh a peace initiative that would eventually entail um a separation from even a divorce from uh Putin’s Russia it’s never clear when Putin is bluffing and when he’s not um it’s uh his threat to escalate um that’s to say to punish the West for supplying these um high-tech weapons to Ukraine by nuclearized the conflict um is plausible that’s to say um Russia is trained up to um to use tactical nuclear weapons and and it it’s military Doctrine um essentially allows it to do so it doesn’t make a big difference either between tactical nuclear weapons and and the big stuff the Strategic weapons so it’s a credible threat from Putin but one that has to be seen in context and the context is that Putin can’t win by using nuclear weapons uh it would lose as I as I’ve said before it would lose the support of China which is a big deal um but more than that it would find itself uh it it would it would essentially uh lose any meaningful control over Ukraine uh because turning it into a nuclear Battlefield is no road to to success or prosperous un reunion between Ukraine and Russia all of these dreams would be extinguished it’s a terrible terrible thing to start using tactical nuclear weapons at this stage or indeed at any stage um and thirdly and crucially um it’s uh it would shed doubts on Putin’s rational control over the situation he’s already faced uh a mutiny last year or attempted Mutiny last year by Uh Russian mercenaries and parts of the army um he’s the the the days when Russia was a an unbeatable military force that that had to be obeyed and listened to uh a fast disappearing his standing would disappear the use of a nuclear weapon is not a sign of strength it’s a sign of weakness and uh weird indecision um and and therefore if Putin has any friends left in the Kremlin they should be urging him not to do that

“China doesn’t want Russia to lose this war.”

The Times’ Russia Boyes says Russia and China’s relationship is “turning sour” following “embarrassing military decisions by Putin.

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