Key Points and Summary – Russia’s grinding war in Ukraine has locked Moscow into deep economic dependence on China, which now buys roughly half of Russia’s crude and supplies much of its imports.
-Yet Beijing isn’t dictating the Kremlin’s moves, and Putin still performs as if he isn’t the junior partner.
-Political pride, historical distrust, and diverging strategic aims complicate the supposed “no-limits” partnership.
-China wants the Ukraine war to keep the U.S. distracted, but its own elites are divided on how far to back Moscow. Russia, meanwhile, cannot square imperial nostalgia with long-term reliance on Beijing.
-Over time, those contradictions could turn “no-limits” into hard limits.
Ukraine War Binds Moscow to Beijing — And Sets Up a Future Break
WARSAW, POLAND – Circumstances in Russia with President Vladimir Putin are such that the longer his war in Ukraine carries on, the more his economic dependence on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) grows—and the reliance is increasing by the day.
But despite that increasing dominant position, China is uncharacteristically not dictating Putin’s every move in return for that economic support continuing.
Not yet anyway.
Equally surprising is that the Russian Federation is not behaving as though it is Beijing’s junior partner, despite the fact that it objectively is at this point irreversibly confined to that status. There are also political, historical, and even geographic factors that dictate that nothing about the relationship of the two nations will be simple or without complications.
Three years after he took power in 2015, PRC Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping and Putin stood in the reviewing stand high above Tiananmen Square. A decade later, on September 3, 2025, the two of them celebrated their alliance again—standing side-by-side in the same spot.
This meeting was again supposed to show the two as equal partners. This disposition is not only no longer the situation; rather, the manner in which the two interact makes their relationship a delicate balance between shielding each other from realities and creating impressions, veneers, and symbolism.
How The Ukraine War Has Weakened Russia Vis-à-Vis the PRC
Conventional wisdom is that the PRC is now and will forever be the senior partner of the two. The declining fortunes of Russia for more than a decade have placed it in a permanent state of inferiority and in perpetual decline.
But what has brought Russia to the point where it is so dependent on the PRC as to be in danger of collapsing if not for Xi’s assistance has been the war in Ukraine. The inability of Moscow to triumph over its smaller and far less oil and gas-rich neighbor has made Putin’s massive nation significantly weaker—cementing Beijing’s position as the dominant partner.
One of the tell-tale signs of this dependence on the PRC is that the country has become Russia’s biggest trading partner. In 2023, the PRC already accounted for more than half of all Russian imports. In contrast, Russia is not even in the top five of the nations that Beijing imports from.
To maintain its war effort, Russia now relies almost solely on China to buy about half of its crude oil exports, which are crucial for its revenue streams.
But as much as they are the proverbial “iron lung” that keeps the Russian economy clunking along like a dying automobile, Beijing’s oil purchases account for only 17.5 per cent of the PRC’s total oil imports. Russia needs China to keep its own economy going—far more than China needs Russia to keep growing and modernizing. It is a fundamentally inequitable arrangement.
Non-Interference Means Limited Leverage
Despite those disparities, not only is the PRC not trying to force Putin’s hand on any major aspects of the war, but traditional Russian arrogance and the nation’s president’s undying belief in his own genius-level intellect keep him behaving as though he is still the proverbial “King of the Hill.”
The PRC needs the war to continue and, as the PRC Foreign Minister and People’s Counsellor for Foreign Affairs Wang Yi told the EU Foreign Affairs Commissioner, Estonia’s Kaja Kallas, the PRC cannot afford for Russia to lose the war in Ukraine.
The reasons are easy to understand. For as long as the US remains “distracted” by the war, it is unable to focus all its energies on standing up to PRC aggression in the Pacific. Beijing needs the US and its allied partners to be “bogged down” in countering Russia more than it needs the war to come to a near-term resolution. But no one in Beijing seems to know what the correct course of action is beyond this fundamental precept.
As a PRC specialist wrote recently in Foreign Affairs, “Forty months into the war in Ukraine, members of China’s strategic community, including foreign policy and security officials, researchers, and pundits, still have differing views on who is at fault and how leaders in Beijing should respond. Chinese social media platforms have been ablaze with fierce debates between pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian voices.”
Russia has its own contradictions to deal with. The same “longing for the old empire” mindset that led to the invasion of Ukraine is the same outlook responsible for its view of the Chinese. The Kremlin cannot rationalize an unequal economic dependency on the PRC that has no end in sight with its self-aggrandized image as an eternal great power. Just listen to Putin’s interview with Tucker Carlson and his pretzel logic view of Russia’s role in the world, and the mentality becomes more understandable.
Ten years after they first met on Tiananmen Square, the two leaders’ views on their nations continue to diverge and will eventually become too contradictory to be reconciled. Sooner or later, the “no-limits partnership” stands every chance of being confronted by nothing but limits as time moves on.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the US Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.
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Jim
September 17, 2025 at 8:01 pm
From the Key Points and Summary:
-Over time, those contradictions could turn “no-limits” into hard limits.
There is that possibility if we play our cards right.
Things have been pushed along towards a Russia-China “World Island” on the Eurasian Landmass.
But there are contradictions, there always are in a great power relationship.
So far, we’ve done a terrible job.
It’s so basic: the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Our actions have pushed the two together… both know we’re coming after them, now Russia, then China.
When digging a hole of trouble, stop digging is rule number one.
Trump has kicked up a possible way out of this predicament.
No more sanctions because Europe won’t fully embargo Indian & Chinese hydrocarbon products.
My suspicion, these refinery hits are a headache.
But it won’t stop Russia from prosecuting the war.
You don’t want to push China & Russia closer together?
Stop this war with a neutral Ukraine.
Then we can let the natural contradictions between Russia and China take their course.
And we won’t be digging anymore.
Swamplaw Yankee
September 17, 2025 at 11:34 pm
Well, well. The op-ed admits that the HAN brain is on the ball. There is finally admission that the PRC CCP Xi regime is ready to avoid Hitlers very tragic mistake on Ukraine.
If the HAN in the PRC are true debaters, then the options of going with Ukraine are explored, filled in and quantified. The Han future in power options lies with Ukraine, must be blatantly clear to the CCP elite.
The HAN CCP elite must be on top of the current Forum of the Free Nations of POST-RUSSIA. The Han CCP elite must be very well aware that the world is already thinking POST – Kremlin Imperialism of Muscovy.
The only vector for the HAN CCP elite is when the FREE NATIONS of POST Terrorist empire Russia ignites. The shills spreading “kovarstvo” will scurry back to ole ruusskie rump Muscovy.
The reality for the Xi Regime is how to cope in 2025 with the intellectual power of 2025 Cossack warriors. The Han CCP elite understand that the Cossack leader penned and implemented the world’s first constitution is 1710. Why? The Cossack Hetman had experienced the centuries of orc ruusskie sex-slave trading of Ukrainian children to the muslim Ottoman Christian-only slave buyers.
The Germans had the same dilemma. Do the Germans win the war and stop the Genocide of Ukrainians by the ruusskie butchers or, doe Germany lose the war and let the Russkie butchers keep on suppressing Ukrainian independence with out and out Soviet butchery.
This was a close German Debate, that seems totally ignored by Yankee Historians. Like, the USA makes clearly bull poop statements about the worlds’ first written constitution.
The world’s historians better start documenting how some Han want the CCP to be losers with Putin’s captive nations craziness or winners with an independent Ukraine free of a 1000 year old Genocide butcher boy.
Shills still populate the op-ed with pathetic screams that the orc ruusskie ethnic want Ukraine to be forced to be neutral, at a time when the Forum of the Free Nations of POST muscovy Russia is openly speaking about the implosion of this aged sex-slave based empire.
The HAN CCP elite can read and think. The benefits to the CCP of an immediate implosion of the Genocide driven Putin regime are immense.
The op-ed fella above is very gentle with his open comments on this imminent implosion of Putin’s sex-slave based empire.
The peer readers are directed to monitor the “Forum of the FREE NATIONS of POST Russia”. Their current convention is for the peer readers to follow and digest.
Obviously, the Xi regime would be advised to follow my old, old advice. Covertly, Cut a deal with Ukraine, one that allows Ukraine to immediately stop the 1000 year old Genocide front line of death that PUTIN’s genetic needs propel him to. Cooperate with weapon supply to Ukraine asap. With a Xi regime deal exclusive to only the PRC CCP and Independent Ukraine, the NOBEL PEACE PRIZE obviously goes to the HAN thinkers/debaters who are solidly pro-Ukraine.
Zi can retire in his world empire victory, even as soon as in the next 12 months! The future, next, CCP leader has a wealth of opportunity with a finally freed Ukraine and a rainbow of Free nations of POST Russia!
PS: Meanwhile, MAGA POTUS Trumpkins can negotiate 3 ring circus bit-coin issues with his very own Weirdo Whacckkooff clawn slimy show scaring nations around the world with the scary threat of their fake code words: Peace, cease fire, neutrality, land swap. The Halloween Costumed Orc ruusskie Putin shills can join in this 3 ring circus slimerama with the Genocide -re-starter himself: WEST’s 2014 marxist betrayer: Obama.
-30-
Swamplaw Yankee
September 17, 2025 at 11:52 pm
PS: a legal notice. The above is all copyright. The above is being shopped to web channels as a huge netflix series on current 2026 history. Obviously, there is no intelligence agency staff anywhere who are underpaid to restrict concepts such as the above.
Right now, Taubira laws, such as exist in France, are being implemented in all NORAD states that intend to not offend US citizens of ethic ruusskie descent who are in favour of Ruusskie instigated Genocide of Ukrainians.
You may not mention the above Ukraine/PRC covert talks or share with anyone on the internet anywhere. Or, the French NGO imitator pre-emptive censorship types in Halloween costumes will come to open your doorfront tonight. -30-
Swamplaw Yankee
September 22, 2025 at 4:10 am
The above op-ed seems a scarce commodity. More of this exact topic is needed.
The DSEI 2025, the Arms Exhibition + European Re Armament Tech show was a great focus on the above op-ed. The invitation only crowd in 2025 was super large and the exhibitors were super numerous.
Even a slow thinker could see that the Xi-Putin LONG GAME must falter in the short term. The military tech on sale, that is, available to Ukraine, means that Putin is a “loser”. What can change that reality?
The Xi regime needs to precipitate its PRO-Ukraine debate. The 17.5 % statistic of oil purchase may go up or down a bit, but the CCP can see that the PRC covert funding for support of the Muscovy Empire must increase, double or triple. The need for the “exit strategy” from the old buy in by the CCP to the “pretzel logic” of genetically deranged Putin is internationally evident. The Terrorist Empire of Genocide Ruusskies will fall exactly when the PRC CCP wants it to fall. The 17.5 % is not the only factor.
As the PRO-Ukraine social media debate makes the move to drop “pretzel brain” clear and logical to the billion of Han “voters”, the CCP must make the switch visible and take FULL worldwide credit for the stop of the 1000 year old Genocide of Ukrainians that the POTUS OBAMA re-started in 2024 and MAGA POTUS Trumpkins continues supporting in 2025.
The NOBEL PEACE Prize is given to Xi and he can gracefully retire as supreme leader of the World. The Free Nations of the Terrorist Empire of the Muscovy declare independence and China is the beneficiary.
XI returns all the illegally occupied land of Ukraine with his “switch” and the USA MAGA Cabal is zero, that is zip, involved with saving this Victory in Ukraine for the WEST. After all, Trumpkins had quickly self-abdicated the leadership of the WEST in favour of his MAGA weirdo whackkoooff Nvidia chip clown show toured gathering cash for the Trump “STABLE” bitcoin game. -30-