Behind the scenes of Russia's invasion of Ukraine,
China has played a significant role.
It's one of Moscow's closest diplomatic partners.
And, according to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping,
the two countries enjoy a friendship
that knows no limits.
All this means that China may have an important indirect role
to play in peace talks between Russia and Ukraine.
But it also means that Russia's brutal war in Ukraine
is rebounding badly on China's reputation in the west.
With me to discuss this is Sasha Gabuev,
senior fellow with the Carnegie Moscow Center.
So, Sasha, I think one of the things
that people find really intriguing about this
is whether or not Vladimir Putin told
Xi Jinping about his invasion plans for Ukraine
when the two of them met in early February in Beijing.
When Vladimir Putin had the meeting of his Security Council
on February 21 that set the war in motion, basically.
A lot of most senior members of his war cabinet
were visibly shocked.
They were not knowing where it's all going.
So if the head of Russian external intelligence,
the SVR, Sergey Naryshkin, was not in the
know that war is actually plan A it's very hard for me
to imagine that Vladimir Putin would discuss this
with a foreign leader, even with Xi Jinping.
Also, it looks like many previous decisions,
like the decision to annex Crimea
or interfere into Donbas war in 2014
or interfere into US elections in 2016
and enable Donald Trump's victory,
were not communicated to Beijing and were not discussed.
The friendship between Russia and China
has been described by both countries
as a no-limits friendship.
But do you think maybe that some of the stresses that
are being created by the invasion
could be driving some friction or some fissures
between the two countries?
What China cares about in this war is not Ukraine,
is not Russia, but the interests of China.
China is a very selfish giant and cares
about its national interest predominantly.
Those interests include a solid partnership with Russia,
which is a giant neighbour, a nuclear-armed power,
and a friendly power.
At the same time China doesn't really
want its relationship with the west
to be impacted by this war.
Depending on who is in front of them
the Chinese diplomats cherrypick the talking points.
And when they're talking to western leaders, they say yeah,
we are supporting Ukraine's sovereignty
and territorial integrity and peace.
When they're talking to their Russian counterparts
the emphasis is on no support for unilateral sanctions
and criticism towards the US.
And if any power really follows Barack Obama's advice,
it's probably China.
It doesn't do stupid shit.
So in this period of time, it really
tries to maintain equidistance.
When it comes to material support for Russia,
here I think that China is doing everything that's legitimate
and that is outside of the scope of US sanctions.
It will follow the letter of the sanctions religiously.
Once the active phase of war is over,
the sanctions are put in place and the landscape
is more or less clear, I think that China
will come in and see what's possible
and how it can engage Russia and gain more
contracts in the Russian market, more purchases of Russian oil
and gas that are legitimate, and at the same time that
would really help China to access
Russian resources on the cheap.
So it sounds to me as if your sense
is that the idea of a split emerging between China
and Russia is not really on the cards, that there's just
too much at stake in the Russian relationship for China.
The problem is that in the western toolkits
of talking to China, there are carrots and sticks.
And sticks are secondary sanctions or special measures
that will punish China for more transactions with Russia.
But carrots are totally absent.
It's really about China-US showdown.
Russia here is more of a sideshow.
China will not demolish the labour camps in Xinjiang.
China will not reinstate civil liberties in Hong Kong.
China and will not stop upgrading PLA fighting
capabilities.
And why would you throw your valued partner, Russia,
under the bus, which the West will just pocket and then
continue pressurising China because it's China?
There have been some reports saying
that Russia has asked China for military equipment,
I mean, weapons to help it in the war in Ukraine.
What's your sense of what's going on there, please?
I think that the intelligence the US
government has shared with some media outlets is accurate.
But it needs a proper context and framing.
Even if Russia has turned to China
for some supplies for the needs of this war,
it would take months to deliver, months to adapt.
And if Russia was asking for combat drones
it means months of training for operators.
It is very unlikely that this request comes in connection
with Ukraine war.
We know that before the war, Russia
started to be interested in some types of military equipment.
But China has technological superiority over Russia, drones
first and foremost.
And it looks like this particular communication
was part of a lengthy negotiation
process that predates the war.
It's helpful for the US government
to take this isolated piece of intelligence
and present it to partners and international community
through the media as Russia turning to China
for military assistance for war needs in order
to put more pressure on China and force Beijing
to distance itself from Moscow.
You've spoken quite a lot about the underlying relationship
between China and Russia.
Could you just give us a sense of how solid do
you think this relationship is?
And to what extent is the personal chemistry
between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin a factor here?
Some people say that these two really are kindred spirits.
What would you say about that?
I would say that China-Russia relationship is very solid.
And there is a notion that it's driven only by confrontation
with the US, which, in fact, it is not.
They share a colossal continental border.
They have resolved their territorial issue.
And they don't want to go back to confrontation.
Then there is natural economic complementarity
between the two.
China has need to import natural resources,
has cutting-edge technology, it has a lot of capital.
Russia, at the same time, is backward
in terms of technology, needs capital,
and has a rich endowment of natural resources.
And then finally, both are authoritarian regimes.
Whenever Putin and Xi Jinping meet,
there is no issue of who poisoned Alexei Navalny
or what are those camps in Xinjiang intended for.
They share their outlook as two authoritarian powers
that really are religious about non-interference
in each other's affairs and sovereignty.
What's also important is that under Xi Jinping and Vladimir
Putin, both political regimes have become very personalised
and very leader centric.
So it's really the emperor and the tsar.
Where do you think we go from here?
I mean, can China really use its influence on Russia
to try to bring some kind of a ceasefire or possibly even
a close to the war in Ukraine?
Or is that hoping for too much?
I think that China will not use its leverage
to convince Russia to stop this war.
China most likely sees this war as irrational,
going against long-term Russian national interests.
But Chinese leaders hate as much as Russian leaders
do when a leader of a foreign country tells them what to do
and tells them what the real interests of China or Russia
are.
If Joe Biden was unable to convince Mr Putin otherwise
by providing military help to Ukraine
and threatening massive sanctions
and also being ready to address Russian security
concerns in Europe, so the collective west
was unable to change Mr Putin's calculus.
Why would Xi Jinping be able to do so?
Some people have said that, in fact,
the Russian invasion of Ukraine might preoccupy
the Americans and the rest of the western powers
to an extent whereby it would leave open the door, perhaps,
for some kind of Chinese military action against Taiwan.
This seems, perhaps, somewhat convoluted.
But I wonder what your take on that might be.
If China is to put the military tool on the table,
to force Taiwan to become part of PRC on Beijing's terms,
it really needs to sharpen its military tool.
And that includes a nuclear deterrent
on par with the US and many other systems,
because taking Taiwan by military force
will not be an easy adventure.
So China, in order to sharper this tool,
needs about a decade.
And then the current crisis over Ukraine
has demonstrated that the west has real collective will
to punish the aggressor.
And then the economic sanctions imposed by the West
can really bite even such a large economy as Russia.
I don't think that the lesson will
be that China needs to stop to be aggressive and integrate
into a US-led international order on American terms.
I think that the outcome will be doubling down on the effort
to import substitute Western technology, to make
its financial system ever more invincible for US sanctions,
and come prepared both in military terms
and in economic terms as well.