30 Thursday February 3 2022 | the times
Wo r l d
President Putin and President Xi will
sign a series of deals in Beijing
tomorrow as well as discuss a new gas
pipeline to China that could provide
Russia with an economic lifeline in the
event of western sanctions.
China will formally pledge its
support for Russia in its dispute with
the West over Nato expansion, the
Kremlin announced.
Moscow also said that it was looking
to move ahead with the construction of
a Power of Siberia 2 pipeline that would
run to China through Mongolia.
Gazprom, the state-backed energy
company, said the pipeline would
deliver 50 billion cubic metres of gas a
year, doubling Russia’s annual exports
to China.
If it goes ahead, the pipeline could
provide Russia with an alternative to its
contentious Nord Stream 2 gas pipe to
Germany, which could be under threat
if Russia invades Ukraine. However,
the new project has been under discus-
sion for a long time and would take
years to complete.
An existing Russian pipeline, the
Power of Siberia, began supplying gas
to China in 2019. Its launch was held up
for about a decade because of
difficulties in reaching an agreement
on supply terms.
Yury Ushakov, Putin’s top foreign
policy adviser, said that China and
Russia would sign a number of agree-
ments on gas during Putin’s visit. He did
not specify what agreements would be
finalised, but said they would “mark
another step in the development of gas
co-operation between Beijing and
Moscow”.
Putin’s meeting with Xi at the
opening of the Beijing Winter
Olympics will be the first time that the
Chinese leader has met another head of
state in person since the start of the
pandemic. It is a rare foreign trip for Pu-
tin, who skipped last year’s G20 and
Cop26 meetings.
“A joint statement on international
relations entering a new era has been
prepared for the talks,” Ushakov said.
“Beijing supports Russia’s demands for
security guarantees [from Nato].”
Ushakov also said that China and
Russia were jointly calling for the
creation of “efficient mechanisms of
ensuring security in Europe”.
Russia and China will seek ways to
protect their economies from
American sanctions, the Kremlin said.
The two countries are expected to
conclude about 15 deals.
Russia wants Nato to withdraw
western forces from former Soviet and
Warsaw Pact countries, halt its
eastwards expansion and vow that
neighbouring Ukraine will never be
allowed to join the military alliance. It
has deployed about 130,000 troops to
within striking distance of Ukraine, but
denied that is planning an invasion.
Video released by the Russian defence
ministry yesterday showed tanks
streaming through fields in Belarus and
combat aircraft flying above as both
countries prepared for joint military
drills for ten days from next Thursday.
Some analysts have suggested that if
Moscow is planning an attack on
Ukraine it will wait until the end of the
Olympics on February 20 so as not to
overshadow the Beijing Games. China
reacted angrily last month to a Bloom-
berg report which said that Xi had
asked Putin not to invade during the
Olympics. Russia invaded neighbour-
ing Georgia during the 2008 Olympic
Games in Beijing.
China and Russia held joint naval
drills in the Sea of Japan last year, and
have increased collaboration on nu-
clear and space technology. Officials in
both countries claim to suspect the
United States of seeking to encourage
uprisings against their respective
regimes. Russia and China said that
recent violent protests in Kazakhstan, a
nation rich in oil, were orchestrated by
Washington.
Last month Xi told Putin in a tele-
phone call that “certain international
forces are arbitrarily interfering in the
internal affairs of China and Russia,
under the guise of democracy and
human rights”.
Like most countries, however, China
has not recognised Russian rule in
Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that
the Kremlin annexed from Ukraine in- Economic ties have not suffered
as a result: China said last month that
annual trade with Russia had more
than doubled to nearly $147 billion over
the past eight years.
Putin will be accompanied to
Beijing by a significant Russian
delegation that includes
Sergey Lavrov, the foreign
minister, Nikolai Shulginov,
the energy minister,
and Igor Sechin, the
head of Rosneft,
the state-run oil
company.
President Xi has
given President
Putin his supportAnalysis
F
or decades China and
Russia were at
loggerheads over
how to implement a
communist revolution.
Now, as this week’s
Winter Olympics summit
between Xi Jinping and
Vladimir Putin is likely to
show, they are cementing
an alliance to make the
world safe for autocrats
(Roger Boyes writes).
The Chinese president
is backing his Russian
counterpart in resisting
what they both declare to
be western interference in
Ukraine; no doubt when
the time comes, Putin will
declare that a Xi invasion
of Taiwan was actually awestern “provocation”.
The wisdom of the
Nixon-Kissinger era was
that Moscow and Beijing
could be played off
against each other to
America’s benefit, but the
Russian troop build-up
around Ukraine has
forced Russia and China
into a sticky embrace.
Relations between the
two have rarely been so
intimate. China has been
buying significant
quantities of pipelined
natural gas from Russia.
The price is lower than
what could be expected
from the Nord Stream 2
pipeline into Europe but it
gives the Kremlin a safety
cushion should the West
decide to punish Russia if
it invades Ukraine.
China could also help
Russia if the US and theEuropean Union strike at
the heart of the Russian
banking system or even
exclude Moscow from
Swift, the international
payments network.
Russia and China have
been thinking for a while,
since the Russian
annexation of Crimea in
2014, how to blunt the
edge of what they deem to
be western financial
warfare.
The US recently
appealed to China to
intercede with Russia to
head off an attack on
Ukraine. Yet, China and
Russia have already
become allies. They stage
military exercises
together, co-ordinate
their voting in the UN
Security Council, and are
working on a joint lunar
mission.The visit of Putin to
Beijing is only his third
Covid-era trip abroad; Xi
hasn’t left China since the
Wuhan outbreak.
Putin is promising that
a “new model of co-
operation” will be sealed.
It is beginning to look
more and more like the
geopolitical set-up
predicted by George
Orwell in 1984 — a world
divided into Oceania
(North America and
Britain), Eurasia
(dominated by Russia)
and Eastasia (the Chinese
landmass).
Putin is gambling on
what he sees as a
leadership vacuum in
Oceania, and thinks there
is something to be won.
Who in the West, after all,
is ready to challenge
rivals on two fronts?West fears
new axis of
autocrats
Putin and Xi form alliance to
Ukraine
Marc Bennetts Moscow