Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Beijing on February 4 coinciding with the opening of the 2022 Winter Olympics and his summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping attracted worldwide attention. The joint statement issued after the summit was focused on security concerns and actions of the US-NATO; extracts of which are as under:
“Some actors representing but the minority on the international scale continue to advocate unilateral approaches to addressing international issues and resort to force…. interfere in the internal affairs of other states….incite contradictions, differences and confrontation”,
“Certain States’ attempts to impose their own “democratic standards” on other countries…. pose serious threats to global and regional peace and stability and undermine the stability of the world order”,
“The sides are gravely concerned about serious international security challenges ….. No State can or should ensure its own security separately from the security of the rest of the world and at the expense of the security of other States”,
“The sides reaffirm their strong mutual support for the protection of their core interests, state sovereignty and territorial integrity, and oppose interference by external forces in their internal affairs. The Russian side reaffirms its support for the One-China principle, confirms that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, and opposes any forms of independence of Taiwan”,
“Russia and China stand against attempts by external forces to undermine security and stability in their common adjacent regions, intend to counter interference by outside forces in the internal affairs of sovereign countries under any pretext, oppose colour revolutions, and will increase cooperation in the aforementioned areas”,
“Certain States, military and political alliances and coalitions seek to obtain, directly or indirectly, unilateral military advantages to the detriment of the security of others”,
“The sides oppose further enlargement of NATO and call on the North Atlantic Alliance to abandon its ideologized cold war approaches”,
“The sides stand against the formation of closed bloc structures and opposing camps in the Asia-Pacific region and remain highly vigilant about the negative impact of the United States’ Indo-Pacific strategy on peace and stability in the region”,
“The sides call on the United States to respond positively to the Russian initiative and abandon its plans to deploy intermediate-range and shorter-range ground-based missiles in the Asia-Pacific region and Europe.”
China-Russia solidarity against the US-NATO and America’s allies is explicit in the above joint statement especially on Ukraine and Taiwan.
The US continues to warn that Russia can invade Ukraine “any day” after supplying weapons to Ukraine and pumping in more troops into Poland and Germany. US President Joe Biden is hoping Russian invasion will improve his ratings at home before the midterm elections but a conflict over Ukraine may turn out to be a geopolitical gaffe of Biden with opposite fallout.
Backed by the West, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky is no mood to honour the Minsk Agreement, which is not acceptable to Russia. Moreover, the US has already sounded the bugle of the US-Russia Cold War. During the joint press conference after meeting German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Biden said that Nord Stream-2 wouldn’t go forward if Russia invades Ukraine. But Scholz merely said, “I say to our American friends, we will be united. We will act together and we will take all the necessary steps and all the necessary steps will be done by all of us together.”
Germany, which earlier had sounded that it wants Nord Stream 2 left out of the conflict over Ukraine, is clearly not happy. Europe is experiencing skyrocketing fuel prices by nor buying Russian gas. Biden has had to talk to King Salman of Saudi Arabia on February 8 about the soaring fuel prices. French President Emmanuel Macron has visited Russia and Ukraine but can do little to influence the Biden administration. Macron was always for a separate European dialogue with Russia. European economy is closely interlinked with China and more US sanctions on China will affect the European economy adversely.
Marine Le Pen, President of the National Rally since 2011 and member of the National Assembly for the 11th constituency of Pas-de-Calais since 2017, has said that France will leave NATO if she is elected president in the next presidential elections slated for April 24, 2022. Wonder if Washington realizes that its geostrategic ambitions cannot afford to roughshod the economies of its allies and NATO members – with economy a major driving force in foreign relations.
Against Biden’s threat of Nord Stream 2, Putin has unveiled new Russian oil and gas deals with China worth an estimated $117.5 billion. Russia is already Beijing’s number three gas supplier. During the Putin-Xi summit, Russia has signed a new contract to supply 10 billion cubic metres (bcm) per year to China from Russia’s Far East. According to Reuters, the gas sales alone could generate around $37.5 billion over 25 years. In addition, Russia’s Rosneft signed a deal with China’s CNPC to supply 100 million tons of oil through Kazakhstan over 10 years. According to Rosneft, the new deal is worth $80 billion.
Wonder if the US realizes how its game of sanctions has provided China with extensive energy supplies from Iran and Russia. Among the 16 deals signed during the Putin-Xi summit, an agreement was also signed between operators of the Russian high-altitude satellite system GLONASS and China’s BeiDou to ensure the “complementarity” of the global navigation satellite systems in terms of system timescales.
Having accused Russia of cyber-attacking the US presidential elections in 2016, its sanctions have combined Russia-China-North Korea having considerable cyber warfare prowess. The FBI Director recently said that China has expanded its spying in the US to such an extent that the FBI is launching one new counterintelligence investigation on average every 12 hours. Also, the “scale of their hacking program … is greater than every other country combined.”
The US military and intelligence officials believe that Russia is planning to hold a major nuclear weapons exercise in February 2022 as a warning to NATO not to intervene if Putin decides to invade Ukraine. The standoff over Ukraine may continue for a couple of weeks but Putin will unlikely back down if Russian redlines are violated. So, the ball is in Biden’s court. Some years back, US scholars had opined that China will likely use tactical nuclear weapons against India to capture the territory it wants. What happens if NATO intervenes in Ukraine or deploys nuclear missiles in Europe is yet to be seen but it certainly has the potential of flaring into a world war.
There are apprehensions in some quarters in India how the Russian-Chinese solidarity will affect India, what with ‘Redfish’, a content creation platform affiliated to Russia’s RT network tweeting: ‘Indian Kashmir is fast becoming a settler-colonial state’. The documentary titled ‘Kashmir: Palestine in the Making’ by Redfish is to be released on February 11. But Moscow has reiterated that J&K is a bilateral India-Pakistan issue.
China and Russia are against the Quad and AUKUS. But Russia does not have a military alliance with China and India has no military alliance with any country either. Indo-Russian friendship is time tested over decades and there should be no apprehensions about Russia acting against our national interests. Russian Ambassador to India, Denis Alipov recently said that India is Russia’s largest defence partner and unique conditions offered by Russia for purchase of weapons have resulted in orders exceeding $14 billion, which is a quarter of Russian weapon exports.
Alipov also said: Russia offers the best in transfer of technology accompanied by offset programs and continued cooperation; Russia has multiple competitive proposals for joint production – BrahMos and AK-203 being examples; India-Russia trade and economic relations have not slowed down; a steel plant in India should be launched in India during 2022 by Russia’s Novolipetsk Iron and Steel Works; two Indian companies are engaged in diamond-cutting business in the Far East, India is also interested in extracting coking coal, oil and gas, Northern Sea Route, transport and logistics projects in the Far East, negotiations are underway for a Russian-designed nuclear power unit of most modern generation 3+ at a new site in India and serial production of Russian-designed nuclear power plants – agreement in principle has been reached, and; India is an independent subject of international relations, its weight in the world is steadily increasing, this trend is fully in line with the interests of the Russian Federation.”
Alipov further said, “I consider the point of view that India becomes the conductor of someone’s ambitions in the confrontation with China to be erroneous. Americans may think differently…. At the same time, our close relations with China are self-sufficient; they have a unifying agenda and are not directed against anyone. Equally, we have intrinsically valuable relations with India.”
Russian officials have conveyed Moscow’s distaste for the Quad earlier also. India has no military pact with anyone and has joined the Quad to safeguard its own national interests. However, while west focuses primarily on western pacific and to engage India in that region; India’s primacy should be the Indian Ocean.
Please wait...
