SEVERAL LIFELINES FOR RUSSIA
Even when Mr Trump had been extra decided to make use of America’s vital financial leverage in pursuit of peace in Ukraine, China is unlikely to bow to any strain.
Quite the opposite, the joint communique issued after Mr Li and Mr Mishustin’s assembly was unequivocal in reaffirming that “China and Russia will all the time regard one another as precedence companions and … correctly reply to exterior challenges,” together with by making “all obligatory efforts to cooperate with one another in opposing unilateral coercive measures”.
The joint communique additionally repeated the now customary formulation that “China helps Russia in safeguarding its personal safety and stability, nationwide improvement and prosperity, sovereignty and territorial integrity, and opposes interference in Russia’s inside affairs by exterior forces”.
Rhetoric to at least one facet, nonetheless, there may be nothing to point a serious step-change in Chinese language help for Russia. Beijing continues to supply Moscow with a number of lifelines.
China stays one of many main importers of Russian oil and fuel which supplies much-needed overseas earnings for the Russian treasury. China can be reportedly a serious provider of so-called dual-use items, together with semiconductors and machine instruments which are vital to sustaining Russia’s defence industrial base.
A database of joint army workouts between Russia and China has recorded over 117 of them since 2003, with one-third over the past three-and-a-half years for the reason that begin of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
