Colonel of the KGB reserve, ex-intelligence officer, political scientist and publicist, Sergey Zhirnov, in an interview with Unian, commented on the tension in relations between Russia and China.
"Things are much worse for China. And it's less bad than it's supposed to be. China has no turn. All this does not mean that China is against Russia's war, or that China will stop helping Russia. China is interested in this conflict continuing in a sluggish variant for many more years, because it exhausts the Russian Federation and makes it completely dependent on China, it exhausts the West, straining its armed forces and capabilities. There is nothing new here.
New different. It was Putin who spat in the face of China. When we discussed Xi Jinping's visit to Moscow, we said something had gone wrong. Putin did not come to meet Xi Jinping at the airport, did not send Mishustin, but sent some abstract vice-premier whom no one knew and did not know. Putin went on to allow himself remarks about China's plan.
On the one hand, Xi Jinping gave him a label, but at the same time trolled him, because in this way, he showed that China decides who to be here and who not to be. Both of them had sour faces. There is no friendship forever. If Putin believed, then he simply did not understand anything about China. The more pompously talk about friendship in the East, the fewer people believe in it.
Even before the visit, China staged a provocation: it published new maps, where it changed all the names on a million square kilometers to the old Chinese ones. In principle, everything is not as rosy as it might seem.
It is not clear to me Putin's behavior. As soon as Xi Jinping left, Putin began to spit in the direction of China, Medvedev immediately started talking about nuclear weapons, and Putin and Lukashenko started talking about nuclear weapons. But Xi Jinping told Putin that this is a red line for China, and that in no case should we talk about nuclear weapons. And the Prime Minister of India told Putin the same thing. Then, Putin shut up for a couple of weeks and raised the issue again.
I do not understand the behavior of Putin. I understand China's behavior, because China is a big world power, 1.4 billion people, a slightly smaller economy than the US, but it is the second economic power in the world. Putin now completely depends on him, since he quarreled with the West and now he has the only economic partners - India and China. Although China is still Russia's most important potential and strategic enemy. China has claims to Siberia and the Far East, but it is not going to fight with Russia, it just buys everything, it has already bought a quarter of them. And Putin, realizing that he had no other plan with anyone, still allowed himself to spit in Xi's face.
Xi Jinping gave the go-ahead, and in Chinese – he didn’t say anything himself, he didn’t descend to Putin’s level. China's permanent representative to the UN Security Council was the first to say that it is unacceptable to use nuclear rhetoric, the second was the ambassador to the EU. For China, this is a terrible thing because to say that their rhetoric is just rhetoric, and you still have to be honored to spit in your face like that. Putin is a crazy fool. He does not understand at all that he has driven himself into a corner, and does not understand that in such a situation, it is impossible to quarrel with the last partner."
