The two presidents will gather at a summit of Asia’s powerful leaders for a rare face-to-face meeting as Mr Putin’s forces suffer stunning losses in Ukraine. But analysts say the meeting will not see Mr Xi, who is leaving China for the first time since the pandemic began, agree to renege on a pledge not to send much-needed weapons to the increasingly desperate his ally. The ancient Silk Road desert city of Samarkand in Uzbekistan was this week ordered into a security lockdown for the leaders. Schools and countless public offices closed for a three-day holiday, the airport closed and you can buy train tickets to Samarkand – as long as your name is on the list. Xi and Putin will be welcomed to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Samarkand, a gathering of Asia’s powerful leaders referred to as the “Dictators’ Club”. The alliance could theoretically counter NATO, but it lacks the same security guarantees, and so is often dismissed as largely irrelevant.
Putin and Xi vow ‘boundless’ friendship
Putin and Xi last saw each other a few weeks before the invasion of Ukraine, when they both vowed a friendship without boundaries. But the direction of the war in Ukraine showed that the Kremlin overestimated Beijing’s support for Moscow. “The Russians are now fully aware that a friendship without borders, as it has been proclaimed, is really a friendship without benefits,” Mark Galeotti, a Russia writer and director of consultancy Mayak Intelligence, told The Telegraph. “The Chinese are not going to do anything to help the Russians at their own expense.” China did not explicitly support, or condemn, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but used it as an opportunity to blame the West for waging economic war on Russia and fueling tensions. Beijing has made it clear from the start that arms sales or any material support for the war effort is completely off limits. And that is unlikely to have changed. If anything, China may be more reluctant than ever to lend a hand. The shock of economic pain inflicted on Russia by the West – from the disruption of transport links and the deactivation of Russians’ Visa and MasterCard bank cards to the freezing of foreign assets by the Russian Central Bank – has been a cautionary tale for China. It showed how easy it can be to become a complete pariah like the Kremlin if you suddenly decide to invade a neighboring country. Chinese companies, from banks to tech firms, view Russia as a toxic destination for business, wary of being punished for circumventing Western sanctions. Even Russia’s hopes that Chinese tech companies like Huawei could easily replace Western imports quickly evaporated.
Russia risks becoming China’s smallest partner
China’s tech giant at the start of the war closed its Moscow office and made it clear that it was not going to sell smart phones to Russia either. Selling microchips that the Russian military badly needs for its high-tech weapons is completely out of the question. A Kremlin aide on Tuesday said Moscow claimed China “clearly understands the reasons that forced Russia to launch its special military operation.” And China’s top diplomat said Tuesday he was willing to work with Russia to take the world order “in a more just and reasonable direction.” But in reality Russia’s disastrous war in Ukraine, which has already cost it thousands of lives, international reputation and hundreds of millions in foreign currency, risks turning Russia into China’s junior partner in Central Asia. Mr Xi chose an SCO summit in Samarkand for his first trip abroad before the Covid pandemic. He finally leaves China just a month before he is expected to receive his third term as leader of the Chinese Communist Party, which could make him China’s longest-serving communist leader since Mao Zedong.
