For two weeks, Vladimir Putin has had a lesson in humility on the ground in Ukraine, where his troops have lost several thousand square kilometers, to the benefit of a Ukraine launched with force to reconquer its violated territory.
But internationally too, the past week has brought worrying signs for Russia and its stature vis-à-vis the rest of the world… enemies and “friends” alike!
In Samarkand, in Uzbekistan, where the annual summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization met on Thursday and Friday, created two decades ago on China’s initiative to consolidate its influence in the republics of Central Asia (formerly preserve” colonial Moscow), Putin suffered serious snubs…
It’s the least we can say: in terms of support, the head of the Kremlin did not get exactly what he hoped for! Whether on the part of President Xi Jinping, but also that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, of India (another small country of one billion 400 million inhabitants)… also present at this summit on “regional security in Central Asia and beyond.
Modi launched to Putin, in front of the cameras: “Excellence, the hour is not with the war! To which Putin, bewildered and crestfallen, replied: “I hear your concern. »
With Xi — the great friend met 39 times, with whom he has common views on the decadence and imperialism of the West, Xi who without directly supporting the war in Ukraine has declared valid Russian concerns about NATO and denounced Western sanctions — things would not have gone so well.
Except that Xi Jinping, unlike Narendra Modi, did not go there with a frontal attack. In the wake of the meeting, he kindly declared that his country “is ready to work with Russia so that the two countries assume a common responsibility as great powers, and play a leadership role”… After these soothing generalities, a more incisive passage: “We must inject stability and positive energy into a world in the grip of chaos. »
Beijing, in its international, economic and other relations, never ceases to speak of the “need for stability”… However, stability is not precisely what we see at the moment on the side of Moscow. Hence the restraint, the concern and even the annoyance that we feel on the side of Beijing.
Without having the cruelty to address him directly – the Chinese know what “saving face” means – Xi Jinping’s message to Vladimir Putin is no less clear: Beijing is not happy with the turn events in Ukraine.
While reserving, in its official propaganda, its reproaches only to the West, China does not want to be associated too closely with a Russia which plays the troublemaker and with a Putin who seems more and more to wear the “loser” hat.
Economically, Beijing’s support for Moscow during the Ukrainian war remains remarkably circumscribed. It boils down to an increase of some 50% in Russian hydrocarbon purchases in the second quarter of 2022 (compared to 2021), which partially offsets the Western boycott. For the rest… quite a few things in truth.
While denouncing them in principle, Beijing does not circumvent Western sanctions… As far as we know, China has not passed on Western high technology that it would have bought and then secretly resold to Moscow. As for the famous and hypothetical Siberia-Mongolia-China gas pipeline, so much hoped for by the Russian side, there was no question of it in Samarkand.
Not to mention the low, if not non-existent, Chinese military aid. This may come as a surprise (given Beijing’s official rhetoric on the responsibilities of the war – it is still and always and only the dreadful West, of course!)… but there is, in the theater of the Russian invasion , weapons, ammunition, vehicles or aircraft from China. (In normal times, it is the Chinese army that buys Russian planes, not the other way around.)
Even a resolute adversary of the West on the political and ideological levels, China today does not want to sacrifice its international trade on the altar of Ukraine: it trades much more with Europe and North America than with Russia.
We often hear the truism that “the West is isolated” in the face of the war in Ukraine. As if Putin had behind him a supposedly united and active bloc comprising China, India, Latin America, Africa and a good part of Asia!
On the contrary, and until further notice—despite the real decline, over the past thirty years, of the influence of the West in world affairs, accelerated by the catastrophic attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan—the war of ukraine is seeing an astonishing return of this influence… which even commands respect from China, and its distancing from Moscow.
While the rest of the world – except perhaps a few Malians and Burkinabés took to their streets to chant “Long live the Wagner Group and long live Poutine!” – remains on the tape, more impartial, wait-and-see or indifferent than pro-Russian.
François Brousseau is an international business analyst at Ici Radio-Canada. [email protected]