Russia and China are not allied though. In fact militarily they are against each other due to India. Russia is selling India weapons that India then uses against China in their ongoing border conflict. This is also why India did not really join the sanctions against Russia.
I read some arguments that being friendly with Russia is a way for India to attempt countering China. Don't want Russias relations to be much better with China than with themselves.
Fascinating, and thanks for the response! I did not know that, but it makes a lot of sense. India would be in a tough spot if China and Russia had a much closer relationship, especially as China and India don't really get along that well. So India needs to strengthen its relationship with Russia by any means necessary in order to have Russia in their corner as opposed to Russia being in China's corner.
I don't understand why people think Russia, China and India are united. They aren't. China and India are rivals and have skirmishes on their borders. China doesn't want to trade only with Russia at the expense of the rest of the world.
The only thing that can make that alignment happen is a common enemy. And only Russia views America as a true enemy. It's not as simple as the media makes it out.
Another way to think about this, if a WW3 breaks out, its not clear that China will defend Russia. And India and China certainly won't defend each other.
I think China is big enough that it can help ease the economic cost on Russia. There are a lot of natural resources, defence and research tech, that China would be glad to get in return as well.
India on the other hand has a far weaker hand as they don't have the economic muscle to challenge the Western sanctions and they are dependent on Russia for military hardware. It seems mind boggling that they are not self reliant on defence equipment, even smaller ones. They can't replace all of that hardware with stuff from West as well, as that will be too costly.
China is actively helping Russia. They’re not neutral, and they’re not simply opportunistic like India. I don’t how much clearer it needs to be aside from China invading Taiwan.
Russia being useless against China is still much better than Russia openly siding with China (and Pakistan) against India. You can't defeat geography, no matter how much common ground increases between India and the West.
Russia are frenemies at best. They are allies today, but they have fought border skirmishes in recent times, and they are worried about Chinese moving to and eventually taking over the Russian Far East
I am really interested in India's stance on this. Russia is India's largest source of arms, and even now Russia still has arms worth blns to be delivered to India. The last two years saw some border dispute between India and China, and despite China's request, Russia still managed to sign a huge military contract with India, and India has been ambiguous over the Ukraine war like China. What will India do next if Russia decides to use Chinese transaction system (which is almost certain unless Putin is overthrown)? And if we count in those countries still actively buying Russian weapons, including Algeria, Egypt, Vietnam, Turkey...we probably need some time to see how things will unfold.
China and India are close allies of Russia - wondering if anything can be done to sway them. While India should be easier, I am sure threats of a great disconnect would make china reconsider what it wants - russian oil or sweet sweet western money.
China is currently very cautious in their stance. The West have given them a wonderful opportunity to buy Russian resources for cheap. They also have investments in Ukraine, in agriculture. It's very likely that Russia's economy will be quite dependent on China in the following years, just like Kazahstan and Mongolia are today. This is a golden oportunity for China and they are a lot more pragmatic and smarter than India not to openly aid Russia right now. They'll buy their stuff later and cheaper after Russia defaults on its debts due to Putin's war in Ukraine while also doing business as usual with the West.
True, India is an ally of Russia and not USA/West. But in case of war, USA can do three things:
1. Support China: China has similar military to USA and 4x the population. If USA does support them, china will strongarm literally every country in the world and become the hegemon.
2. Stay Neutral: This would mean every bigger country can attack and capture nearby smaller ones. The reason expansion wars don't happen now is because of the fear of US.
3. Support India: If US is to counter China, this means supporting India.
I don't have the time nor inclination to do a deep dive. At the D-Day celebrations who were together? Putin and Xi [0].
Even back in 2018 [1], China was worker for closer ties to Russia. I could probably find more videos discussing closer relations, but I'm gonna leave it here.
What you probably don't seem to realise or what to know. Russia and China are becoming ever so intertwined on various issues:
1) All border issues settled.
2) Military cooperation and investment into weapons.
3) Integration Payment systems. When Russians travel they use Mir. When China Travel they use UnionPay.
4) Investment from China into Russia.
5) Sharing of technology from both Russia and China to each other and working on the same projects. This is a HUGE one. Both Russia and China sharing technology to improve their economies and AI is a big one.
6) De-dollarizing from their respective economies and trading in Rubles and Yuan. Meaning that the US/EU cannot sanction them and they can trade with Turkey and Iran.
7) Organising the OBOR initiative to trade with those currencies, again circumventing US sanctions.
8) Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, Germany, OBOR makes for a compelling case where both Russia and China share trade and both sit atop a large chunk of the world. Away from US influence.
Did not back them up at the UN or these news headlines about China not helping Russia with this or that?
From what it seems, China is absolutely helping them in actions, while pretending to be neutral, and they’ll do everything to maintain the appearance of neutrality.
China even has state-owned, single-purpose banks that don’t touch USD at all, specifically for sanction-busting. Russian banks are now issuing UnionPay cards, apparently.
India, supposedly a US ally in the region, buys most of their military hardware from Russia.
Turkey, a NATO country, also buys weapons from Russia, and openly refused to implement sanctions.
Pakistan, under pressure from tons of 20+ diplomats, openly defied them and did not vote YES, either, and then their PM went to visit Putin.
South Korea refused to implement EU/US sanctions, and instead sought to be exempt, and implement their own, supposedly equivalent, sanctions. That’s another way to circumvent sanctions, as the final regulations and loopholes could be quite different, despite being legally “equivalent”.
The West will of course down play all of this, but it seems the unipolar days are history.
It's not just about direct military aid. Russia will be the base for any trilateral talks with China when escalation happens. Russia's closeness with China also means some gains for India.
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