As a result of the Ukraine crisis, President Putin’s Russia has turned to its strategic partner China for support. China has shown greater understanding than Western countries for Russian viewpoints, and Beijing shares Moscow’s view that the revolution in Kiev was inspired or even instigated by Western powers.The Ukraine Crisis has therefore strenghtened the relationship between the two countries, which is according to Xi Jinping and Putin better than in a hundred years.
Last year, China and Russia signed two huge deals for the delivery of Russian gas to China. Putin is also clearly concerned that Russia may have become too dependent on China, and therefore seeks to diversify its foreign relations through active diplomacy with other Asian countries, such as India.
Stein Tønnessonis a Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Adjunct Professor at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research, Uppsala University, where he leads a six-year research programme 2011-16 on the East Asian Peace, and Adjunct Professor at the China National Institute for South China Sea Studies in Haikou, Hainan. He is associate editor for Asia in the Journal of Peace Research and member of the Editorial Board of Global Asia (based in Seoul, Republic of Korea)
Pavel Baevis a Research Professor at PRIO; he also is a Senior Non-resident Fellow at the Brookings Institution (Washington, DC) and a Senior Associate Fellow at the French Institute of International Affairs (IFRI, Paris). Baev is the author of Russia’s Energy Policy and Military Power (London: SAGE, 2008) and co-author of The Caspian Sea Region Towards 2025 (Delft, 2010). He has a weekly column in Eurasia Daily Monitor and writes the blog Arctic Policies and Russia’s Ambitions on the PRIO website.
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