Because the love between China and Russia is not true
Russia, that with China is a marriage of contingent and non-strategic interests. The point of Gianmarco Volpe, the global desk chief of Agenzia Nova
Ukrainians are selling their skin dearly. In Kharkiv, the country's second city, they fight street by street. They are courageous and tenacious people, who bear on their skin the scars of a story that almost never smiled at them: only in the last century the holodomor, the Nazi invasion, Chernobyl. And yet, I believe, the example of leaders who do not run away, do not give up, do not lose their minds has a great influence. Starting with President Zelensky, who in the space of three years has gone from the role of the protagonist of popular television comedies to that of a tragic figure in great history. In his stubborn stay in Kiev with the enemy at the gates, in his constant contacts with other world leaders, in the calm of his interventions Zelensky demonstrates an unsuspected charisma, transmits strength to his people and perhaps instills conviction even in his timid international allies. , who are now more determined to make Putin pay for it than when they appeared a couple of days ago. As I have read from someone in these hours, everyone has the former comedians they deserve.
The Russian forces will take over the capital anyway, it's just a question of when. The comparison is asymmetrical, unbalanced. Putin wants to get there without shedding too much blood, but he is determined to go all the way and in fact mobilizes Kadyrov's Chechen cutthroats. The offer of negotiations in Belarus (a country participating in the invasion alongside Russia) is clearly a joke for propaganda purposes.
The question is, what will Russia do once it gets Zelensky out of the way? He may perhaps be able to impose a puppet government on Kiev, but in order to maintain it he will still have to keep occupation troops in Ukraine indefinitely. A guerrilla scenario would open, a low-intensity conflict that could go on for years.
Putin will probably decide to sit down at the negotiating table, but only after taking Kiev. It could propose a partition of Ukraine, with the new borders following the course of the Dnipro River, perhaps with the annexation of the eastern part of the country. Even in this case, however, Russia would find itself having to face fierce internal resistance, above all in the face of a heavily hostile and armed subject on the other side of the border. All this while sanctions will strangle the Russian economy: as we said, the effect will be seen in the long run.
Whatever the scenario, Putin will remain a dead man for the West. If he has chosen to invade Ukraine, it is because he believes his back is covered by China. Obviously, Putin sees a new bipolar world in the future, a continent drift between a declining democratic West and an authoritarian Eurasian ascendant bloc. However, he seems not to have come to terms with a couple of facts.
The first is that the one with China is a marriage of contingent interests : Russia has the energy resources to feed the Chinese economy (which even in recent months has appeared to be in trouble) and can offer Beijing a precious edge in global competition. with the United States. But China is the great factory in the world. Its strength is based on production. What Putin cannot offer Xi is an alternative market to the Western one, capable of absorbing both the junk and the high-tech products that the People's Republic needs to export. The time will inevitably come when China turns its back on Russia on the altar of Western capital.
The second fact is that perhaps Putin has not done well with those who hold him in power. Not so much the people, imbued with propaganda and in any case limited in the freedom to express themselves, as that oligarchic establishment animated by millionaires who look to the West, not China, to invest capital, to spend the holidays, to send their children to school. It is to these people, weakened by sanctions, that Putin will ultimately have to explain his moves.
Whatever the scenario, if not understood, it will be a bloodbath in Ukraine.
(Extract from a post published on Gianmarco Volpe's Facebook page )
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/perche-non-e-vero-amore-quello-fra-cina-e-russia/ on Sun, 27 Feb 2022 11:36:10 +0000.