Chairman Xi plays hard to get with Putin, and puts limits on their "partnership without limits". Putin may have to put on a dress and lipstick to get Xi to play ball. No one wants to be associated with a loser, and Putin is losing his war in Ukraine badly. Putin wants more than Xi Jinping offered – ISW Translation: "You're on your own."
All Russia needs is a hard shove and their “not very special military operation” will crack like San Andres.
Russia is being defeated by cheap Australian cardboard drones. They are covered with wax to make them waterproof. They are believed to come out of a Cheerios cereal box as a prize. Australian cardboard drones already performing battlefield missions in Ukraine
I don’t know that he’s losing it badly, but he definitely isn’t winning it. And that may or may not be the same thing. But, yes, I agree that Xi is probably getting progressively embarrassed and impatient with Russia’s lack of military success. China either wants Russia to win quickly, so China can get on with its Taiwan strategy and use the threat of Russia to fix the West in Europe; or it wants Russia to collapse, so China can take back the lands that Russia stole in the 1800s. This frozen conflict stuff works at cross purposes with China’s desired ends.
battlefield being shaped in Crimea. Reading more and more reports of targeted attacks in Crima Russian invaders declare state of emergency in Dzhankoi, Crimea due to "drone attack" (msn.com) The occupying authorities in Dzhankoi, in the north of Russian-annexed Crimea, have announced that they have imposed a municipal emergency in the city after a nighttime attack by "Ukrainian drones". .................................. At the same time, a Russian Telegram channel ASTRA reported that a drone attack on the evening of 20 March had damaged the locomotive depot, the station security building, and freight and fuel storage points at the railway station in Dzhankoi. The channel also writes that the attack on the station caused interruptions to the locomotive depot's power supply.
It's by far the more plausible scenario. Russia is cutting China a sweetheart deal on oil and China, in return, mass produces munitions at a much cheaper cost to Russia. China, already adept at mass producing product at steeply discounted rates.
Putin vows to respond after Britain sent uranium arms to Ukraine - as Russia warns of... - LBC Putin must be furious. He cares so deeply for the safety and health of his troops. What a leader!
“It's not that these absurd US government-sponsored lies are believable, it's that a large segment of the Western public *wants* to believe these lies. It reinforces their unfounded sense of superiority & justifies their apathy or even support for their gov's meddling abroad.” — Brian Berletic —
Considering the gigantic scale of Chinese investment in the United States at various levels and the value of "trade" me thinks MONEY will be a big driver and motivator regarding Li's US / Russia position. Not real easy to hug Vlad and surrender TRILLIONS of dollars by getting heavily involved in a shooting campaign. How does China benefit? The overthrow of the United States? May be in the plan but I have a feeling that the reality of doing business with an economy the size of Italy's (Russia) and discarding the economics between China and the USA will have a serious affect on the decision making process.
This is one of the reasons the Taiwan invasion isn’t coming anytime soon. China is working towards a domestic consumption economy but they aren’t there yet. Their exports are more than the US and Japan combined, their economy would crash if that got cut off. They also don’t have the chip making ability they need if they get cut off from that. Their military isn’t there yet on a number of fronts, and their only major ally just showed their military ass to the world in Ukraine. With likely many of the same problems China’s military has with nepotism, politics, command and control etc. So they are just yelling loudly across a lot of fronts so they sound strong.
