At the start of February Vladimir Putin made a pilgrimage to Beijing to meet the Chinese president, Xi Jinping. The occasion was the start of the Winter Olympics, which was followed almost immediately by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, just as the Winter Olympics hosted by Putin in Sochi eight years earlier had been followed almost immediately by the annexation of Crimea. Whether or not Putin told Xi of his plans, it was an important part of his strategy for the coming move against Ukraine to have China on his side. It suited him also to meet as if he was an equal with Xi, confirming Russia’s status as a great power, one of his major preoccupations. In practice, of course, the two were far from equals. Whereas once China was the Soviet Union’s junior partner in the communist international, now Russia is the weaker partner. As China vies for the top spot in the international economic rankings with the United States, Russia no longer even makes the top ten.
The two men promised that their friendship would have “no limits”. They signed a lengthy communiqué in which they described their countries as upholding the underlying principles of the United Nations, following international law, affirming human rights, authentically democratic, ready to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in their security policies, and sharing a determination to challenge American pretensions to global predominance. The communiqué did not mention Ukraine, referring only to the Russian Federation’s proposals “to create long-term legally binding security guarantees in Europe”, which China supported. Reciprocating, the Russian side reaffirmed “its support for the One China principle” and opposed “any forms of independence of Taiwan”.
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