On March 22, Xi Jinping's three-day visit to Moscow ended. The trip was planned last year, and the fact that the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin on March 17 did not affect the plans of the Chinese leader. Andrey Smolyakov, a sinologist, told The Insider that the recent visit suggests that China intends to take advantage of Russia's weak position to strengthen its dependence, without providing Moscow with significant assistance or making specific promises.
“The fact that Russia and Putin are in a weak position is a good sign for Xi’s visit, because right now a new dynamic of relations between China and Russia is being built, where China is the senior partner and Russia is the junior partner, and any negotiations will be highly uneven and unequal. I think Xi understands this very well. Once a warrant for Putin's arrest is issued, it makes sense to negotiate from a position of strength and a senior partner, because Russia has very few other partners left.
I don't think that this was any signal for the Western countries, because we did not hear any new rhetoric during this meeting: it's all the same old statements about a multipolar world, about containing UN principles, about fighting Western imperialism and other. These are old stories from C's board books, which do not carry anything new for us. The dynamics in the East are not changing because of Xi's arrival in Russia, but rather behind Xi's back, because we saw the arrival of the Japanese Prime Minister in Buchu, which is a bright sign for the Eastern partners. Now India has doubts about Chinese policy, and they are starting to transfer their international payments from the yuan. Here, rather, the activity that appears against the backdrop of Xi's arrival in Russia is a separate issue for China's concern. But I don't think there is any message here that Xi wanted to send to other countries. It’s more of a purely Russian-Chinese story, apart from the positioning of Xi and China as a big peacemaker in recent months.”
One of Moscow's main goals was an agreement on gas supplies to China via the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline, which was supposed to partly compensate Russia for the loss of the European market. However, in this matter, the Russian side, apparently, has achieved nothing .
“As a result of the meeting, as many as 14 documents were signed, and all of these are so-called memorandums of understanding. These documents are very much loved by Chinese businessmen and politicians and, by and large, do not oblige anyone to anything. These documents are signed for the sake of appearance: the parties discuss what they agree with, what they strive for and what they like in each other, but they do not take on any contractual or legal obligations. No official documents on either economic or political cooperation were signed, including in the field of gas stands. In general, Xi is not opposed to buying Russian gas at a low price, but he does not want secondary sanctions, but they may be. There is no urgent need for Russian gas, and no one is in a hurry to make promises to Russia. Perhaps someday we will talk about gas supplies to China, but so far no documents have been signed.”
Another topic under discussion is the possible military assistance from Beijing. The Western press has repeatedly written, citing its own sources, that China supplied rifles, body armor and drones to Russia. On the eve of Xi's visit to Moscow, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said that the US authorities suspect China of providing non-lethal military assistance to Russia and fear that lethal weapons may also be sent in the future.
“We don’t know anything about weapons at all. We have several statements from US intelligence that this issue is allegedly under consideration by China, but so far no decisions have been made. We also have more recent data from Ukrainian intelligence, which said that China probably has no plans to supply weapons to Russia. If they were not sure of this, then, most likely, there would be no point in publishing it. We know that there were certain supplies of some materials that could be used by Russia on the battlefield, but they were in very small quantities, and most likely these are the remnants of contracts that were concluded even before the war.
Last weekend, new claims were released from US intelligence that munitions made in China were found on the battlefield. What kind of ammunition and how much of it, intelligence did not specify, and condemning statements against China did not follow. Not the fact that China is a direct supplier. In general, this is logical, because China supplies weapons to half the countries of the world, and such weapons sometimes ended up in Western countries, so their entry through third or fourth hands to Russia is not surprising. There is no information on whether China is ready to make new deliveries to Russia. There is definitely no acute interest of China in this. It may appear in the future hypothetically, if Russia finds itself in some very difficult situation, in the expectation that Moscow will fall any day now.
China clearly does not want to incur the extra weight of sanctions. The United States and NATO countries have made it very clear that in the case of direct deliveries, these sanctions will be and they will be tough. Last weekend's message about Chinese munitions was precisely planned to appear before the Xi-Putin meeting to remind China that they and their weapons are being watched. I don't think Xi and Putin have come to some kind of arms deal."
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the press that Putin and Xi Jinping did not discuss the Kiev peace plan during the talks, but exchanged views on the provisions of the Chinese "settlement" plan .
“China is trying to present itself as a kind of cat Leopold, but in practice it doesn’t turn out quite like that. China has had some success with Iran and Saudi Arabia, but the situation with Russia and Ukraine is fundamentally different. Yes, Iran and Saudi Arabia also had rather difficult relations, the conflict lasted a long time, and China's success there is a high-profile story, but this experience is not applicable to Russian-Ukrainian relations. It is not possible to say that China has any realistic ways to influence Russia, Ukraine and Western partners. Statements about a peaceful settlement lead nowhere and repeat one to one China's plan, which was published a month ago: no concrete steps, no deadlines.
This is just a proclamation of some principles that China allegedly recommends that other countries follow, there is little sense in this, because the principles are very vague: we are for everything good against everything bad. Statements after the meeting between the leaders of Russia and China have hardly departed from this, despite the fact that Putin said that he would familiarize himself with China's plan. This phrase also does not carry any weight, because there is nothing to get acquainted with. Everyone has long been acquainted, and the plan is very short.
Perhaps one interesting peace effort is Xi's pending call to Vladimir Zelensky, about which no details are yet available. We know that it was planned and discussed, but so far there is nothing more to say. At the moment, it looks as if China's peacekeeping efforts are a game to build a new global identity, a new authority and image for China. This is such a wake-up call for Western countries that China allegedly adheres to a neutral point of view here and that sanctions should not be imposed on it. And at the same time, this is a signal to other developing countries that you can play like China and pretend that we have nothing to do with it, talk about peace, but at the same time do what is profitable under the table.”