Russia & CIS

Russian MPs started discussing the bill "On guarantees to the President of the Russian Federation who has terminated his powers." The bill was submitted to the State Duma for consideration in early November. What the new bill is about The bill was authored by the head of the Federation Council committee on constitutional legislation and state construction, Andrei Klishas, and the head of the State Duma committee on state construction and legislation, Pavel Krasheninnikov.The explanatory note to the bill notes that in accordance with the Constitution of Russia, the president can be removed from office and deprived of immunity only pursuant to charges of high treason or another serious crime. Such charges will have to be brought down on the president by the State Duma (the Parliament of Russia), and the State Duma and the Federation Council will have to make relevant decisions based on conclusions of both the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court.Both the decision of the State Duma to bring charges against the president and the decision of the Federation Council to deprive the former head of state of immunity must be adopted by two-thirds of the votes of the total number of senators and deputies of the lower house of the parliament. In addition, such decisions have to be initiated from at least one-third of MPs.According to the current legislation, the procedure for depriving the head of state of immunity can be initiated by the chairperson of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, who can send a relevant submission to the State Duma.The bill under discussion stipulates that the former head of state will not be brought to criminal or administrative responsibility, nor will he be detained, arrested, searched or interrogated. The difference with the current legislation lies in the fact that such restrictions currently apply only to acts committed during presidency, not afterwards. No warranties for Mikhail Gorbachev During the discussion of the bill, MPs discussed whether the guarantees of immunity in question may extend to former President of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev. As it follows from the answer of one of the authors of the bill, such guarantees are not provided.

Vladimir Putin buys Alexander Lukashenko's loyalty by supporting his idea of acquiring an oil field in the Russian Federation, expert Sergei Pikin believes. Putin buys Lukashenko's loyalty On Wednesday, BelTA news agency, citing the press service of President Alexander Lukashenko, reported that Vladimir Putin, in a telephone conversation with his Belarusian counterpart, supported his idea of acquiring an oil field in the Russian Federation by Belarus."The President of Belarus turned to his Russian counterpart with a request for a possible acquisition of an oil field in Russia. Vladimir Putin supported this idea," BelTA informs.Sergei Pikin, the chairman of the Energy Development Fund, told Pravda.Ru that this is a political step, in which Putin is "buying Lukashenko's loyalty."Oil and gas resources still remain Russia's prime trump card in the negotiations between Russia and Belarus on integration processes, because Belarus does not have such resources, Sergei Pikin said.As for natural gas, it goes about the price, and it is unlikely that anything can be changed here, because Beltransgaz is the property of Gazprom, not Belarus, he noted. Oil is everything for Belarus "Oil is important. Belarus refines most of its oil it gets from Russia and then sells it for export. Therefore, it is important for Minsk to receive oil at minimal costs in order to get the maximum margin in exporting and refining it. I don't think it will be super attractive projects that our giant companies can not develop themselves, but Belarus may have interest in the deposit that Russian companies show less interest in," Sergei Pikin said.The possibility of acquiring an oil field by Belarus will be work developed in cooperation with relevant departments, Putin's official spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.In early January, Belarus planned to reduce oil imports from Russia to 30-40% of its needs. Alexander Lukashenko put the question to Moscow bluntly: either Russia sells oil to Belarus at a discount or there will be no integration within the Union State.In 2019 alone, the duty-free price on oil that Belarus buys from Russia (24 million tons) saved the country about $1.67 billion. The country processed 18 million tons at its refineries and exported the rest of the oil, and Minsk derived profit from the duty (about $ 418 million) for itself.However, the ongoing tax maneuver in the oil industry in Russia nullifies duty-free trade, as the proceeds from the mineral extraction tax (MET) increase proportionally.Even if Belarus acquires a deposit in the Russian Federation, it will be forced to pay the MET, which will sharply reduce the margin. This once again proves the political nature of the statements of both leaders.

On September 24 it became known that Russian President Vladimir Putin was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Writer and editor-in-chief of the President newspaper, Sergei Komkov, became the initiator of the nomination. According to him, if Putin does not receive the prize, the Nobel Peace Committee "will have to be closed." How the writer explained Putin's nomination Generally speaking, the President newspaper reported the nomination of the Russian President for the Nobel Peace Prize as early as on 9 September. It was then noted that Professor Sergei Komkov (he is not only a writer and editor-in-chief) had already nominated Vladimir Putin for the prize in 2013. It is worthy of note that Putin was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 and 2016.On September 24, the writer gathered a special conference, which was dedicated exclusively to his initiative. "We must understand: either they are servants of those dark forces who are ready to vote blindly and always for all kinds of evil forces, or they are still real descendants and real executors of the will of the great Nobel," Komkov said, adding that if Putin does not receive the prize, the Nobel Peace Committee "will have to be closed.

In the first half of 2020, Russia has decreased imports of palm oil for the first time in six years. During the first half of 2019, Russia imported 506,000 tons of palm oil, and only 473,000 tons - during the same period of this year. The imports of palm oil in the Russian Federation have thus decreased by seven percent.Russia has ben continuously increasing palm oil imports since the late 1990s. This sector of imports has seen a tenfold increase over this period of time to a record-setting 1.06 million tonnes in late 2019. Palm oil enjoys great demand in the food industry: it is convenient for manufacturers to use it, and the cost of palm oil is lower in comparison with other vegetable and dairy fats.Making one croissant on a traditional recipe requires about 25 grams of butter, which costs about four times as much as its vegetable analogues. When ready, the croissants will look absolutely the same in comparison with those made with the use of vegetable oil substitutes, so it makes no sense for manufacturers to use expensive raw materials.During the last couple of years, Russia has been importing about one million tons of palm oil every year, primarily from Indonesia. Most of this volume - about 90 percent - is used in the food industry  by confectioners, bakers, and dairy products manufacturers.The decline in the imports of palm oil in the first half of 2020 may be due to the strengthening of state control over the quality of dairy products. In 2019, it was forbidden to display food products containing milk fat substitutes on the same shelves with products that do not contain such substitutes. The Russians consume only a small proportion of palm oil with milk substitutes - only 12-13 percent. Most often, palm oil is used in the confectionary industry. The decline in palm oil imports is not associated with the confectionery industry, it comes as a result of the introduction of new rules for the sale of products with milk fat substitutes, experts say. The temporary closure of cafes and restaurants could affect palm oil imports, as cafes and fast food outlets use a palm oil containing mixture for deep-fried cooking. Therefore, the demand in palm oil may go back to its common values already in 2020 due to a temporary decline in the purchasing capacity of Russian consumers amid the pandemic.

The Kremlin currently sees no reason to initiate a criminal investigation into the alleged poisoning of Aleksei Navalny, and considers accusations against the Russian authorities nothing but "empty noise," said Dmitry Peskov, press secretary of the Russian president. "First, one needs to identify the substance and establish what caused this condition. There must be a reason for the investigation. For the time being, the patient is in a coma," said Peskov, adding that the investigation should be based on the fact of poisoning with a particular substance. Peskov noted that the version of Navalny's poisoning can only be viewed as one of the versions of what happened to the opposition politician. According to Putin's press secretary, there are "many other medical versions", including taking certain medications and body's response to certain conditions."All these versions were reviewed by Omsk doctors and specialists from Moscow in the very first hours after the incident," the Kremlin spokesman said, stressing that Russian doctors did not find signs of the poisoning in Navalny's body.Dmitry Peskov criticized the West for trying to present the version of Navalny's poisoning as the only version of what happened to him, and noted that the medical analytics on the issue among Russian and German doctors is the same, "but the conclusions are different."

The story with the poisoning of Alexei Navalny is a strange bundle of facts that leave a very bad taste in the mouth, politician Nikolai Starikov believes. The German press published a statement from Jaka Bizilj (the founder of the Cinema for Peace Foundation), which he made on Bild Live on Sunday night. Bizilj, who organized Navalny's transportation from Omsk to Berlin for treatment, suggested that Alexei Navalny, the head of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, would survive the "possible poisonous attack." "From my point of view, the key question is whether he can maintain health and continue his activities," he said. "If he survives, as we all hope, he will not be able to participate in political struggle for at least a month or two," Bizilj added. The sky is open for Navalny and no one else Nikolai Starikov, political and public activist told Pravda.Ru that there is no reason to say that Navalny was poisoned. Russia doctors did not make such a diagnosis."Therefore, this is wishful thinking at the moment," said Nikolai Starikov.The politician found it difficult to answer the question of how the card with the "poisoning" of Navalny would be played."Now it is not clear what game we are playing here. The very fact that a Russian citizen was taken out of Russia in a matter of hours after the conversation between the President of Finland and the President of Russia, was greeted at the military airport, and then accompanied by external surveillance by the FSB, which, in my opinion, is his security guards rather than persecutors - all this all creates such a strange story that leaves a bad taste in the mouth," Nikolai Starikov noted.According to him, the man was flown out of Russia without any problems when there is no air communication between Russia and Germany due to the coronavirus pandemic.

One of the most severe economic crises broke out in Russia 22 years ago. Since then, a "tradition" has developed in the country - in order to mark another anniversary of the 1998 default, specialists try to analyse whether it is possible or impossible for another major financial crisis to break out in Russia. Let us recall that three days before the announcement of the default, then Russian President Boris Yeltsin "firmly and clearly" stated that there would be no devaluation of the Russian ruble. On August 17, the government and the Central Bank announced a technical default on the main types of government securities and sent the ruble exchange rate plummeting. The events of August 1998 became an extremely difficult test for both the Russian political system and the national economy, even though it was not the first crisis that Russia had seen in the 1990s. Russian economy in 1998 and 2020 In 2020, both the global and Russian economies have once again com across a crisis that no one really expected at the beginning of the year. More precisely, few people assumed that the coronavirus pandemic could be the cause of such a major global crisis. Of course, this year gives yet another reason to compare the current situation in the Russian economy with the one that took place 22 years ago.Experts from the Higher School of Economics looked into the matter and concluded the following: "A close default is not visible in sight." What about the foreseeable future? The experts stated that both in 1998 and in 2020, the economies of Russia and the world faced a crisis, which, inter alia, was caused with a decline in energy prices. "However, the current economic situation is significantly different from the one that we saw twenty-two years ago. The main difference is about the availability of significant reserves and a low level of the public debt," the study says.

Russian nuclear submarine K-141 Kursk sank 20 years ago, on August 12, 2000, during exercises in the Barents Sea. All 118 people on board were killed. On August 12, 2000, the submarine carried out the conditional missile attack on the ships of the alleged enemy, and the connection with the nuclear cruiser was lost for good. The Kursk was found two days later resting at a depth of 108 meters, 80 miles from the main base of the Northern Fleet of Russia in Severomorsk. Several attempts were made to evacuate the Kursk crew members, but they all failed. On the night of August 19, Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to return to Moscow from his vacation in Sochi, and announced that there was almost no hope left to save anyone on board. In 16 days, divers could recover 12 bodies. After the wreckage of the nuclear submarine was raised to the surface, the bodies of other 103 submariners were removed from the hull. Two submariners - Dmitry Kotkov and Ivan Nefedkov, as well as chief specialist of Dagdiesel, Mamed Hajiyev, remained at sea forever.According to the conclusions of the government commission, the Kursk submarine disaster occurred due to the explosion of a torpedo in the bow compartment of the submarine. According to the official version, the tragedy occurred as a result of the torpedo explosion in N4 torpedo tube, which triggered the explosion of other torpedoes in the first compartment of the sub. According to the investigation, the first explosion occurred as a result of the leakage of hydrogen mixture from microcracks on the torpedo body. The cracks appeared as a result of "abnormal processes." The escaped mixture, having exploded, destroyed torpedo tube N4 and the nearby N2. A second explosion, with a terrifying capacity of 5,000 tons of TNT, took place two minutes later and completely destroyed the bow section of the Kursk. The explosions did not kill all the submariners at once. Some of them died a few seconds after the explosion, but the death of at least 23 other people in the 9th compartment of the nuclear submarine occurred many hours later. The disaster took place in shallow waters, in a clearly marked area of ​​the Barents Sea with the presence of a large number of Russian ships. The submariners were sending out SOS signals - they were convinced that they would soon be heard rescued. President Putin is still criticized for refusing to interrupt his vacation immediately after the accident. His flat response to a question from Larry King, who asked Putin about what happened to the submarine still annoys many. "It sank," Putin answered King bluntly. On August 12, 2020, people came to the Serafimovskoye cemetery in St. Petersburg, where 32 Kursk submariners are buried, to pay tribute to the victims of the terrible disaster. A mourning service was held, people laid flowers to the graves. Churches in many cities of Russia held services in memory of the killed submariners. However, 20 years later, the cause of death of 118 submariners remains a mystery.The command of the Russian fleet officially announced an emergency and raised the alert only 12 hours after the explosions.The news was unveiled to the general public only two days later. The Russian leadership refused to accept offers of assistance from other countries for four days. At first it was said that radio communication with the crew was maintained, then it was officially confirmed that communication with the crew was carried out through the knocks.The Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Navy, Vladimir Kuroyedov, refused to accept foreign aid and communicated a fake version about the collision of the Kursk with a foreign submarine. On the evening of August 14, Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov, who was in charge of the investigation into the causes of the accident, said that Russia did not need help from other countries.In fact, however, the Russian navy was unable to save the dying men. The team of Norwegian divers, who were called for help when it was too late, and who arrived at the scene on August 20, managed to open the hatch in the 9th compartment of the sunken cruiser a day later. It was already filled with water.On August 23, President Putin addressed the nation. He said that communication with the sub had been lost at 23:30 on August 12, while rescue works began four hours after the tragedy. Communication with the Kursk was lost at 11:28 a.m. on August 12, and rescue operations began 29 and a half hours later. The first attempt to dock with the 9th compartment hatch coaming platform was made only 43 and a half hours after the explosions.Putin claimed that the fleet had all the necessary life-saving means that were fully operational. That was a lie too. The Northern Fleet had only one obsolete rescue vessel "Mikhail Rudnitsky" and three rescue vehicles, all of which had broken down repeatedly during the rescue operations. None of the submersible vehicles could dock with the hatch of the 9th compartment.Putin stated that foreign aid was accepted as soon as it was offered. However, the decision to attract foreign rescuers was made by the President of Russia, only when it became clear to him that the situation was critical, and the rescue operation was absolutely disastrous.The Russian authorities had been unwilling to recognise the relatives of the perished submariners as victims. They were recognized as such only when they turned to Putin personally. The Kursk case had been classified immediately, and the relatives were never able to get acquainted with the materials of the case. The lawyer of the victims, Boris Kuznetsov, managed to declassify the case only through the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation. In 2002 he appealed against the decision  not to open a criminal case. However, all Russian courts refused to relatives of the deceased submariners. The lawyer then appealed to the Strasbourg court on behalf of the father of the deceased Lieutenant-Commander Dmitry Kolesnikov.In 2010 the ECHR communicated the Kolesnikov vs. Russia complaint and tried to contact the applicant's lawyer. However, a far-fetched criminal case had been filed against lawyer Kuznetsov by that time for disclosing state secret. The lawyer was forced to leave Russia and seek political asylum in the United States. The ECHR approached the applicant himself - Roman Kolesnikov, a retired captain of the 1st rank (late Kursk submariner Dmitry Kolesnikov continued the family dynasty).However, the father of the deceased submariner withdrew his complaint about the Kursk case. "Nobody is fighting these lies, corruption, theft, although the president and the prime minister make very nice statements. Can I stand up and fight? They will point fingers at me and call me Don Quixote. Of course, everyone understands that it was a lie, that they did not take efforts to rescue the men, that everything in the Navy had long been sold and squandered."The materials of the investigation into the sinking of the Kursk nuclear submarine continue to remain classified. In accordance with Russian law, 30 years after the disaster, a commission may be established to decide on the possibility to lift the label of secrecy from the Kursk files.

The Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper published an article under the headline "On the Foundations of the State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Field of Nuclear Deterrence." The material, which was prepared by the General Staff of the Armed Forces, speaks about the conditions, under which Russia can use nuclear weapons against another state. The General Staff noted that the document appeared at a time when Russia was trying to deter the arms race unleashed by the United States. It is this fact that prompted Russia to take an unprecedented step to publish its vision of its role in the security system. USA's aggressive behavior Based on the document, the United States has launched another arms race as a result of several sequential steps made by its administration: pull-out from the ABM Treaty in 2002; pull-out from the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles in 2019; pull-out from the Open Skies Treaty in 2020. According to top Russian military officials, the purpose of such actions taken by the US administration is to deploy missile systems near Russian borders and exclude arms control on its own territory.In addition, the United States intends to pull out from the START III Treaty. The USA may thus cast serious doubts on two other fundamental documents that contain a nuclear catastrophe in the world:

I was recently a guest on Kevin Rothrock’s Naked Pravda podcast on Meduza.io, talking about the role of military journalism in Russia and the potential impact of the arrest and prosecution of Ivan Safronov. Here’s the description of the show from the Meduza.io website, where you can also hear the full interview.

On the morning of July 7, federal agents arrested Ivan Safronov, a longtime journalist who recently took a job as a communications adviser to Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin. Safronov is being charged with treason and faces up to 20 years in prison. 

His lawyers have been granted limited access to the case file compiled by the Federal Security Service, which indicates that Safronov is suspected of selling secret information to Czech intelligence agents about Russian military cooperation with an unnamed African Middle Eastern country. The Czechs supposedly recruited him in 2012 and he allegedly sent them the data over the Internet five years later in 2017.

Outside the FSB’s headquarters in Lubyanka Square, during Safronov’s arraignment hearing on July 7, dozens of journalists picketed, each taking turns holding up signs in his defense, and police officers arrested them, one by one, for an unlawful assembly. 

On Tuesday, June 23, Russian President Vladimir Putin addressed to the nation to speak about Russia's efforts in the fight against coronavirus, the state of affairs in the Russian economy and prospects for the future. "These, of course, are difficult days, weeks, months - we all had a different sense of time. They brought too many changes in our lives: restrictions in our work and communication, anxieties and fears, and even the grief of loss. Thoughts on what will happen tomorrow, how to protect loved ones from misfortunes, how to support family and parents," the president said in the beginning of his speech, which was most likely pre-recorded and aired two hours later than was originally announced. "It is important that in our country there was no confusion, but on the contrary, many were united in their understanding of the crisis, the real threat," the president noted. Putin thanked the people of Russia "for mutual support and dignity," which Russia showed during the most dangerous stage of the epidemic - self-isolation. According to him, protective measures taken in Russia made it possible to delay the epidemic, its peak, for 1.5-2 months. It saved tens of thousands of lives.

As one would expect, the European Commission for Democracy through Law (or the Venice Commission) criticized the amendments to the Russian Constitution. What should be expected after the critical review? What commission experts did not like According to experts of the Venice Commission, the amendments make the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation more vulnerable to political pressure, because the powers of judges can be terminated on the proposal of the president. In addition, the amendments provide for a possibility not to enforce decisions of international courts, including decisions made by the European Court of Human Rights. It goes about a change to article 79 of the Constitution. The Venice Commission called to either remove the amendments or change their wording. What they say in Russia Senator Andrei Klishas, ​​co-chair of the constitutional amendments working group, commented on the conclusions from the Venice Commission.

Russian President Vladimir Putin penned an article about the reasons for the outbreak of World War II. Putin's article was published in the Rossiiskaya Gazeta (The Russian Newspaper) and in the US-based magazine The National Interest. The article is quite lengthy and it would be is incorrect to say that the Russian leader focuses on only one thesis. Here are some of them: The Soviet Union contributed most to the destruction of Nazism; It is unfair to claim that it was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that triggered World War II. All leading countries are responsible for its outbreak to a certain extent; Russia calls on all countries to expedite the declassification of prewar and military archives; Some European politicians, Polish in particular, are trying to sweep the Munich Agreement under the carpet, which led to the division of Poland; Irresponsible calls to deprive permanent members of the Security Council of the veto right. Pravda.Ru asked historians to give their opinion about Putin's article.

Nikolai Patrushev, the Secretary of the Security Council of Russia, gave an interview to a well-known Russian publication, in which he spoke about new insidious plans of international political elites about Russia. The official said that this time, the West intends to crack down on Russia for the imminent vote on amendments to the Constitution of Russia. The sealed carriage of the revolution According to Nikolai Patrushev, the standard "claims" were used as a reason for launching the mechanism to remove the sitting Russian administration from power: dispersal of a peaceful demonstration; death of a protest participant; possible election fraud. The head of the Security Council anxiously announced the financing of the so-called non-systemic opposition by Western countries and shared the plans of his ill-wishers: "Activities aimed at destabilizing the socio-political situation in our country are being constantly intensified. To this end, an extensive network of foreign non-profit NGOs and domestic public structures dependent on them is being created on the Russian territory to implement so-called democratic programs and projects that meet the interests of Western states." According to Nikolai Patrushev, on the eve of the vote on amendments to the Constitution of Russia, Western curators of the Russian non-systemic opposition will mobilize their opportunities to:

The former head of Chuvashia, Mikhail Ignatiev, filed a lawsuit at the Supreme Court of Russia, in which he disputed the decree, which Vladimir Putin had signed to dismiss Ignatiev from his post. The news became a bombshell, because Ignatiev became the first ex-governor, who disputed Putin's decree on his dismissal by filing a lawsuit at the Supreme Court. There was a time, when governors sued president, but that was a very long time ago. Putin's decree on Ignatiev's resignation due to the loss of trust was made public on January 29, 2020. It is not very often, when Putin uses the 'loss of trust' formulation in his decrees that dismiss regional heads from power.

I wrote a piece on the CSTO and the Warsaw Pact for Russia Matters. Here’s a preview. You can read the whole article here.

This month 65 years ago, the Soviet Union announced the formation of the Warsaw Pact. For the next three and a half decades, the pact remained the security alliance of the Communist world, designed to counter NATO in Europe, before becoming defunct in 1991. Almost immediately, however, post-Soviet Russia laid out a new collective defense organization. Officially known as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), that post-Soviet pact has proved to be no match for the Warsaw Pact. Neither CSTO nor the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the other collective security pact of which Russia is a member, pose a real threat to the U.S. and its allies above and beyond the threat posed by their individual member states.

The Warsaw Pact was formally founded on May 14, 1955, as Moscow’s answer to the integration of West Germany into NATO. Its members included the Soviet Union and its East European satellite states: Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania. Albania was initially a member, but withdrew in the 1960s after siding with China during the Sino-Soviet split. The pact obligated member states to mutual defense, allowed for member states to station troops on each other’s territory and set up a unified military command under Soviet control. During the 35 years of its existence, the pact only undertook one operation as an organization—the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia, though Hungary’s withdrawal from the pact in 1956 was one of the proximate causes of the Soviet invasion of that country. Both of these actions were practical applications of the Brezhnev Doctrine, which justified intervention in any socialist state if socialist rule was considered to be under external or internal threat. The pact’s dissolution in July 1991 was a key signal that the Soviet Union’s hold on Eastern Europe had been broken and that the Cold War was truly over.

After the subsequent breakup of the Soviet Union, leaders of several of the newly independent states signed a new collective security treaty. Although the treaty was signed in 1992, no practical actions were taken until the early 2000s, when six states formed a new organization on its basis, imaginatively called the Collective Security Treaty Organization. Through this new organization, the member states sought to enhance the existing treaty’s mutual security commitments to develop a standing organization that enhanced security cooperation through regular exercises, while aspiring to further integration including an eventual joint command structure. However, the organization was largely moribund for several years after its founding. Although it became more active in the last decade, organizing regular and increasingly frequent military exercises since 2012, it still does little more than provide a venue for cooperation among the military forces of its member states.

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The second wave of the pandemic may arrive sooner than we expect, and the world will have to deal with it. Russia needs to change her approach to planning and business processes, experts say. The leaders of the Federal Reserve System, the International Monetary Fund and the World Economic Forum announced that it would take economy several years to recover from the current crisis completely. Analysts believe that the current crisis in the Russian Federation is similar to the pre-war situation. The main problem is seen in the new growth of the number of infections in China. As many as 40 cases of the coronavirus infection have been recently found in the city of Shulan in Jilin province, which borders on the Russian Federation. The Chinese authorities decided to close the city, similarly to the practice they used in relation to Wuhan. Experts believe that in the United States, the coronavirus is going to come back again along with seasonal flu. Elena Malinnikova, the chief freelance specialists for infectious disease at the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation, believes that the pandemic of the new coronavirus infection in Russia will end by July. However, many financiers surveyed by Deutsche Bank, (55%), believe that coronavirus-caused problems are going to return.

The first criminal case in Russia regarding the non-payment of compensations to medical personnel working with coronavirus patients was initiated in the Krasnodar region, the press service of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation said. The case was filed in the town of Armavir under Part 1 of Art. 293 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (negligence) following a pre-investigation into the non-payment of incentive payments to doctors for their work and working conditions during the coronavirus pandemic. On May 16, a video message of ER doctors of Armavir was posted on the Internet. In their message, the doctors said that they did not receive any financial assistance for their work in the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was said that the violation of the rights of doctors to receive incentive payments "became possible due to acts of negligence committed by the administration of the medical institution."

Gazprom, Russia’s natural gas monopoly, with the help of the Akademik Chersky pipe-laying vessel, is going to build the remaining 160 km of Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline. This is a challenge for the United States. The Akademik Chersky pipe-layer is currently anchored in the German port of Mukran, where it is being loaded with pipes for Nord Stream-2, Bloomberg reports.  The agency substantiates its point with satellite images of the ship off the port of Mukran. The photos, published by Planet Labs Inc., show that sections of the gas pipeline, which were in storage near the harbor, have been moved to the pier for loading. Thus, the agency concludes, Gazprom is moving the construction of the Trans-Baltic gas pipeline to the final stage.

One more policy brief from the series on Russian strategic culture and leadership decision-making, written for a collaborative project organized by the Marshall Center with support from the Russia Strategy Initiative. This one is on Russia-China military cooperation.  Several sections of this brief are based on previous work on Russia-China cooperation that was co-authored with Michael Kofman, Paul Schwartz, and Katherine Baughman.

As with the previous ones, I am posting the full text here with permission from the Marshall Center. Please go to the newly updated Marshall Center website if you would prefer to read a PDF version.

Executive Summary

• Since 2014, Russia and China have developed a strategic partnership, primarily due to enhanced military cooperation, including sales of advanced military equipment and an increasingly robust program of bilateral and multi-lateral military exercises. Economic and diplomatic cooperation have also increased, though to a much lesser extent.
• Bilateral cooperation is unlikely to advance to the level of a full alliance because of differences in geopolitical interests and asymmetries of power, with Russia remaining reluctant to fully acknowledge China’s geopolitical rise.
• Actions by the United States to pressure both Russia and China have the effect of pushing the two countries closer together. To prevent a closer partnership, the United States should focus on creating areas of policy divergence between the two states.

Introduction

There is widespread consensus among scholars that, although Russia and China have been moving toward closer cooperation through the entire post-Soviet era, the trend has accelerated rapidly since 2014.1 The relationship was boosted by Russian leaders’ belief that Russia could survive its sudden confrontation with the West only by finding an alternative external partner. China was the obvious candidate because it had a suitably large economy, was not openly hostile to Russia, and was not planning to impose sanctions in response to the Ukraine crisis.

Since 2014, the bilateral relationship has been focused on increased military cooperation, closer economic ties, and an increase in coordination on responses to various issues in international politics. Although some advances have occurred in all three areas, military cooperation has advanced the most. As discussed in more detail later in this paper, Russia and China have institutionalized a comprehensive mechanism for military consultation, expanded military technical cooperation initiatives and military personnel exchanges, and expanded regular joint military exercises. In the diplomatic sphere, Russia and China have supported each other in various international organizations and worked to establish new international institutions that could act as alternatives to existing Western-dominated institutions.2

Although economic cooperation is the weakest aspect of the Russia-China alignment, it has progressed a great deal, particularly in the energy field. “China is eager to increase energy relations with Russian companies,… [while] Russian concern over its increased dependence on China in the East is deemed secondary to expanding Russia’s customer base beyond the still dominant European market.”3 At the same time, there have been limits to this cooperation, particularly in the economic and financial sectors outside of the energy sphere. China refused to help Russia overcome the effects of Western economic sanctions and bilateral trade and trade in national currencies has remained limited, with little diversification of trade and investments. On the political side, neither country has shown itself to be prepared to support the other’s geopolitical interests if doing so would hurt its own interests.4

This policy brief focuses primarily on strategic and military cooperation, where the two sides have made the greatest progress. After briefly discussing the prospects for a strategic partnership between Russia and China, I examine the progress in and remaining constraints on expanding bilateral military cooperation, outline three scenarios for future cooperation in this sphere, and conclude with a discussion of how the United States should respond.

Strategic Partnership?

As bilateral cooperation has progressed, analysts have increasingly examined whether the Russia-China relationship has reached a level of strategic partnership. The growing consensus is that it has.5 According to Alexander Korolev, the partnership is neither ad hoc nor temporary and provides clear benefits for both sides: “Through this partnership, Russia can gain access to more instruments for promoting its agenda of balancing the United States and enhancing its version of multi-polarity in Europe. China, in turn, receives Russia’s political backing and access to Russia’s energy resources and military technologies, which are essential assets for China in its growing tensions with the U.S. in Asia.”6  Some Russian scholars are even more optimistic about the trajectory of the relationship, suggesting that, over time, the two states might even develop an alliance.7

At the same time, there is a similar consensus forming that the current upward trend in Russia-China strategic cooperation should not be viewed as irreversible. In particular, scholars note that, should Russia’s challenge to the United States start to destabilize the international system, it may also jeopardize China’s peaceful rise. This would lead to a divergence in the countries’ interests and potentially cause a rift between the two powers to emerge.8 Some scholars argue that the geopolitical and economic factors that have hindered Russia’s past Asian pivots could have a similar effect again, although this is distinctly a minority position. One possibility proposed by analysts who hold this view is that a future leadership transition in Russia might result in a policy shift back toward a preference for closer relations with Europe, undermining the long-term prospects of Russia’s partnership with China.9

Central Asia represents one potential area of tension between Russia and China, because the two states have formulated competing regional influence projects for the region. As a result, some analysts believe that the two countries may be heading toward a strategic rivalry caused by China’s increasing desire to play a role in Central Asian security and by competition over energy export routes and trade connectivity in general.10 A more likely scenario, however, is that the two countries will maintain a division of responsibilities that allows them to continue to cooperate in the region, with Russia taking primary responsibility for security issues while China focuses on economic development.11

The global coronavirus pandemic initially introduced another source of tension into the Russia-China relationship, especially since Russia moved quickly in late January to close its borders with China. This move was seen by some observers as an indicator of a lack of trust in Chinese information, since China at the time was still making an effort to minimize the scope and threat of the epidemic. At the same time, the almost immediate decision to reopen the border to commercial traffic highlighted Russia’s dependence on Chinese goods.12 As it turned out, even this partial closure proved to be economically damaging, especially in the Russian Far East.13 However, any residual tension was overcome once China largely ended community spread of the virus. Once the threat of spread was over, the two countries developed complementary information campaigns designed to highlight their mutual assistance in the crisis and the superiority of authoritarian systems over democratic ones in marshalling resources to fight the pandemic.14

Future of Bilateral Military Cooperation

Russian senior officials have highlighted the special nature of Russia’s defense relationship with China by characterizing the ties in terms of a strategic partnership. As the two countries have expanded the number of military exercises and consultations while deepening military technical cooperation, analysts have suggested a growing alignment between the two countries at a political level that allows for stronger defense ties. This does not mean that Russia and China are about to enter a military alliance. As cogently argued by Michael Kofman, Russian and Chinese leaders have labeled the relationship a strategic alliance because a military alliance is not needed, given that the two countries do not need each other for security guarantees or extended nuclear deterrence. That said, they have sought to make their ties more formal, as shown by the 2017 agreement on a three-year road map to establish a legal framework to govern military cooperation. This framework is expected to be completed and signed later in 2020, further codifying various aspects of defense ties, including the option of conducting joint long-range aviation patrols.15

Military Technical Cooperation

Although China was Russia’s leading client for military hardware in the 1990s and early 2000s, the arms sales relationship sharply declined after 2006 because of a combination of Chinese unhappiness with Russian pricing policies and the poor maintenance record of Russian equipment, as well as Russian concerns about China’s tendency to reverse-engineer Russian equipment for both its own use and export abroad. Russian arms sales to China saw a modest revival post-2011 but expanded most substantially after the Ukraine crisis, with agreements for the sale of S-400 air defense systems and Su-35 combat aircraft signaling the end of Russia’s informal ban on sales of advanced weapon systems to China.16 In October 2019, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia was helping China develop its own ballistic missile early warning system. Russia’s new willingness to share information related to strategic nuclear weapons highlights the extent to which old sensitivities about sharing advanced military technology with China has dissipated in recent years.17 Russia has also turned to China for electronic components and naval diesel engines that it could no longer obtain from the West. Most significantly, military cooperation and defense ties improved as defense sales declined, making clear that such ties are driven at the senior political level and not tied to arms sales.

However, Russia faces a difficult choice this decade in either providing advanced technology to China, knowing that the technology will most likely be copied, or forgoing arms sales but with the expectation that China’s defense sector will develop comparable systems in the near future. The previous Russian arms export strategy of selling the “second-best” technology available while staying a generation ahead is no longer viable. China’s defense industry has sufficiently caught up with or worked around Russia via defense-cooperation deals with other countries that it is now only interested in the most-advanced Russian weapons available. China’s advances in weapon design and general goal of self-sufficiency in military production suggest that Russian arms sales will never reach the peak achieved in the early 2000s and that China will emerge as a stronger arms market competitor to Russia over time.

Military Exercises

Military exercises are a central pillar of bilateral military relations. Moscow and Beijing have recently been rapidly expanding the scale and pace of their joint exercise activity far beyond the two traditional programs, the Peace Mission ground forces exercises in Central Asia and the Joint Sea naval exercises. Both of the long-standing exercise programs have had an anti-U.S. character, with gradually increasing levels of complexity and joint activity. However, the exercises have been criticized for being overly scripted and poorly coordinated, as well as for continuing to lack a joint command structure.18 These criticisms are not necessarily warranted, as the purposes of the exercises are primarily to build military ties at the senior level and to signal political intentions rather than to establish interoperability. There has been no evidence that Russia and China intend to operate in a joint command structure; such a structure would not make sense for two countries that have not entered a formal military alliance.

The naval exercises between Russia and China have been more effective in terms of providing realistic operational experience, although they have not focused particularly on interoperability between the two navies. Naval exercises are not only becoming more frequent but also are being held in new geographical areas. Before the Ukraine crisis, Russia refused to hold bilateral exercises in such controversial territories as southern China near Taiwan. Since 2015, however, naval exercises have been held in areas such as the Baltic and South China Seas as a way of signaling the two countries’ growing power, expanding military ties, and mutual displeasure with the United States.19 Recent trilateral exercises with Iran represent another example of this steady expansion in the use of exercises for political signaling, now including third nations.20 Given China’s desire to be more visible in the European maritime theater, one can expect an increase in exercises that serve the Chinese desire to show its flag in distant waters.

Since 2015, the two countries have expanded their repertoire of exercises, including adding joint missile defense exercises in response to the U.S. deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea. Most observers are aware of growing Chinese participation in Russian strategic exercises, including Vostok-2018 and Tsentr-2019. A joint Russian-Chinese bomber patrol in July 2019 demonstrated that Moscow is increasingly willing to disregard the interests of other states in the Asia-Pacific region in its pursuit of a closer military relationship with China.21

These exercises are primarily focused on setting a positive tone for military-to-military ties at the highest levels, rather than increasing interoperability at the tactical level. The exercises suggest that Russian-Chinese military cooperation in the air domain, which lags naval exercises, will increase. Stronger participation of Chinese air assets in Tsentr-2019 further substantiates this observed trend.22 Space is the next likely frontier for expanding cooperation, although it may be limited given sensitivities about the technologies involved in this domain.

Limitations on Bilateral Military Cooperation

Despite steady progress over the past decade, there remain significant geopolitical and technical constraints on military cooperation between Russia and China. Although senior Chinese and Russian officials repeatedly and publicly affirm that their relationship is characterized by great trust, in reality, a lack of mutual trust remains an obstacle to more robust cooperation. Although Russia and China formally settled the last of their border disputes in 2008, there are still regions where the two sides’ geopolitical interests may not align in the long term. Russia remains concerned over potential Chinese encroachment into the Russian Far East. Russia’s concerns are fueled by a combination of past Chinese claims to territory Russia annexed in the 1800s and the contrast between the sparsely populated Russian Far East and the densely populated Chinese border regions, which have generated ongoing Chinese immigration. A military incursion is seen as unlikely by Moscow relative to the more insidious problem of what Russian leaders fear could prove to be (1) a creeping annexation, in which China projects influence into parts of the Russian Far East on a de facto basis through a large influx of illegal Chinese immigrants, and (2) a steady reorientation of the Russian Far East toward more economically attractive Chinese markets and away from the distant center of power in Moscow.

As the relative balance of influence in Central Asia continues to shift more in favor of China, the potential for the two sides to clash over interests in the region remains significant. Beijing has steadily supplanted Russia as the principal economic power in Central Asia in terms of investment and lending. Still, countries in the region continue to look primarily to Russia to defend their security interests; additionally, Russia remains the principal labor market for this region.

Thus far, this de facto division of labor has enabled Russia and China to maintain a reasonably stable working relationship in Central Asia, such that they do not step on each other’s vital national interests or security concerns. However, as China’s Belt and Road Initiative develops, its economic footprint in Central Asia is likely to grow larger, which could lead to tensions between Beijing and Moscow.

Russia has sought to play a key role in the development of the Arctic region; in particular, it plans to capitalize on new energy sources, as well as the opening of the Northern Sea Route. While Moscow has been willing to work with other members of the Arctic Council, Russia has been reluctant to allow non-Arctic powers, such as China, to play a major role in the region. By contrast, a resource-hungry China has plans to extend its presence to the Arctic and is building its first domestically-produced icebreaker. Although none of these geopolitical concerns are currently likely to cause tensions that could limit military cooperation between Russia and China, they could be factors in the long term.

The asymmetry in economic power between the two countries, including their potential regional influence and global heft, has grown more visible. Furthermore, Russian strategic culture, long having seen itself as superior to China, is visibly struggling with the new realities of this power balance. As a result, Russian political elites have yet to come to terms with China’s rise. Finally, both countries are deeply nationalistic and prestige-seeking, which means neither would be particularly willing to subordinate its military to the leadership of the other. Russian leaders’ desire to maintain an independent foreign policy means that they will not accept Chinese leadership or impose limitations on their relationships with other countries for the sake of Chinese foreign policy. Although the two countries seek to manage conflict over core interests, most international competition is seen as fair game, whether it is arms sales or foreign direct investment.

Russia and China have placed a low priority on achieving greater interoperability during joint military exercises, reflecting an enduring lack of interest on the part of both sides in developing the kind of integrated military capability needed to conduct effective joint military operations.23 At the tactical level, issues such as language and communication highlight that these are decidedly different military structures, with different planning processes and organizational cultures. This limits what the Chinese are able to learn from their counterparts.

China is seen as a predatory power by many Russian experts, so there is a natural degree of apprehension among the Russian military. General Staffs plan contingencies around capabilities, because intent can change. This is especially so when dealing with another great power that is self-admittedly revisionist in its ambitions. Despite the positive outlook of Russia’s national leadership on the benefits of a growing Sino-Russian alignment, the military establishment will always see the Chinese military as a potential adversary and plan accordingly.

Scenarios for Future Russia-China Military Cooperation

The impact of various scenarios for the development of Russia-China military cooperation on U.S. interests in the Asia-Pacific region is inversely correlated with their likelihood. That is, the most likely scenarios are relatively low impact, while the highest-impact scenarios are very unlikely to develop. In this section, I outline three scenarios for future military cooperation between Russia and China.

Low Impact, High Probability

In a low-impact, high-probability scenario, Russia and China expand their military cooperation by holding additional joint naval exercises with countries that are seen as adversarial to the United States and expanding the visibility of their maritime presence both in the Pacific and the Mediterranean regions. As noted earlier, previous joint naval exercises have been conducted in the South China Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Baltic Sea, and future theaters could include other areas within the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. Expanded exercises in these regions would serve the two countries’ respective purposes, as Russia seeks greater visibility in the Asia-Pacific and China seeks greater visibility in the European maritime theater.

Both countries seek to reciprocate U.S. freedom-of-navigation operations to the extent possible by visiting the Western Hemisphere. Russia and China could agree to hold a naval exercise in the Caribbean Sea, hosted by Venezuela or Cuba. Such an exercise would have little long-term impact on either Russia’s or China’s geopolitical influence in Latin America and it would not do much to improve their military capabilities or naval interoperability. It would, however, generate a great deal of media attention, highlighting the countries’ ostensible global reach and potential strategic partnership. In other words, both countries could feel that they had scored a propaganda win at relatively low cost, but the actual impact on regional security would be negligible.

Medium Impact, Medium Probability

A medium-impact, medium-probability scenario might focus on additional sales of Russian advanced military equipment. The most interesting systems for China would include diesel-electric submarines, over-the-horizon radar systems, early warning systems, space-related technology for satellites, microchips, and next-generation aircraft engines. In return, Russia might accelerate the purchase of Chinese defense-industrial components, such as heavy-lift cranes, machine tools, and circuitry board components and parts. Although Russia would benefit substantially from procuring Chinese surface combatant vessels, given the shortcomings in those parts of the Russian defense-industrial complex, the financial interests of Russia’s domestic defense industry would likely prevent such deals from being made.

The two countries could also build on Russia’s recent sale to China of S-400 long-range air defense systems to agree to the sale of Russian S-500 air defense systems once those come online. S-500 systems would have a longer range than existing systems owned by China and may have the capability of defending against a wider range of missile types. These capabilities would lead to a significant improvement in Chinese air defense capabilities versus the United States and its allies. China would seek to acquire the 40N6 extended-range (400-km) missile, which has reached initial operating capability with the S-400, either as part of an S-500 deal or on its own for China’s existing S-400 systems.

High Impact, Low Probability

A number of highly unlikely but potentially very damaging scenarios present themselves. One such area would involve greater Russian-Chinese defense industrial cooperation on sensitive technology, such as theater hypersonic weapons or submarine quieting. Although military establishments on both sides would almost certainly resist allowing the other side access to such technology, if such cooperation did develop, it would substantially affect the ability of the United States to maintain a favorable regional military balance and retain a technological edge in certain domains over China. One possibility for enhanced defense cooperation that has been discussed in recent years, though with little progress to date, is a potential technology transfer deal in which Moscow would provide Beijing with the RD-180 rocket engine in exchange for space-grade microelectronic components.24 Past discussion centered on trading finished equipment, but a  closer relationship between Russia and China may result in consideration of exchanging production technology in the future. Such a deal would increase China’s lift capacity and Russia’s ability to produce advanced guidance and control systems.

Another scenario in this category is a joint military intervention, most likely in a Central Asian country in the event of a political crisis or instability, because Russia and China have previously conducted exercises to deconflict areas of responsibility in this type of scenario. However, one should not exclude the possibility of a joint Russian-Chinese intervention in Africa or the Middle East. While the countries lack core interests in these regions, the cost and risk of intervention is also dramatically lower and the barrier for entry in such operations is not especially high. Both countries have the expeditionary capacity to conduct relatively small force deployments around much of the world and might well seek to do so together in response to a contingency where their interests align.

The least likely, but nonetheless possible, scenario is a military crisis with the United States in which one country takes advantage of a situation to press for geopolitical gains. For example, in the event of a standoff between the United States and China, Russia would seek to leverage the distraction of the United States to make opportunistic gains. Russia could deploy forces to Asia or provide military assistance via deniable means to China in order to raise costs to the United States. Because China is quite remote from Europe, the likelihood of Chinese involvement in a crisis between Russia and members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Europe is too low to be worth considering.

How Should the United States Respond?

There is a general perception among experts that greater cooperation between Russia and China is inevitable, given the core precepts of present-day U.S. foreign policy. Scholars focused on relative power suggest that the two countries will inevitably balance against the most powerful country in the international system.25 Furthermore, U.S. efforts to pursue a hard line against either Russia or China, and especially against both at the same time, have the effect of driving the two countries closer together. For some scholars, this suggests that accommodating them within the existing international order would be a more effective response.26 Scholars focused on the role played by ideas highlight the perceived threat of liberal ideology and suggest that if the United States reduces its emphasis on democracy promotion and regime change, this would reduce the impetus to Russian-Chinese cooperation.27

In this geopolitical environment, actions by the United States that threaten Russia and China in a similar manner or present a common security challenge will have the effect of driving the two countries closer together. This is especially true if the actions are strategic in nature. Examples of such actions include the deployment of missile defense systems or freedom-of-navigation operations near the shores of either Russia or China. Both of these actions create a perception among Russian and Chinese leaders that they share a common global security challenge from the United States—and one that is serious enough that they would be best served by facing it together.

On the other hand, actions that disaggregate the nature of the threat perceived by Russian and Chinese leaders would help create divergence in their interests and thereby slow the trend toward a closer bilateral relationship. For example, the United States could challenge Russia in ways that are exclusive to the European theater, such as by pulsing additional troops to NATO member states for exercises. Similarly, China could be challenged in the regions of Taiwan and Southeast Asia rather than in East Asia or maritime territories adjacent to Russian territory. Russian relations with such countries as Vietnam and India could be exploited to highlight potential tensions between Russia and China.

Notes

1 Alexander Gabuev, Friends with Benefits? Russian-Chinese Relations After the Ukraine Crisis, Carnegie Moscow Center, June 29 2016, https://carnegie.ru/2016/06/29/friends-with-benefits-russian-chinese-relations-after-ukraine-crisis-pub-63953.

2  Alexander Korolev, “How Closely Aligned Are China and Russia? Measuring Strategic Cooperation in IR,” International Politics, May 2019.

3 Tom Røseth, “Russia’s Energy Relations with China: Passing the Strategic Threshold?” Eurasian Geography and Economics, Vol. 58, No. 1, 2017, pp. 23–55.

4 Mikhail Korostikov, Дружба на расстоянии руки: Как Москва и Пекин определили границы допустимого [“Friendship at Arms’ Length: How Moscow and Beijing Determined the Boundaries of the Permissible”], Kommersant, May 31, 2019, https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/3984186.

5 Tom Røseth, “Moscow’s Response to a Rising China: Russia’s Partnership Policies in Its Military Relations with Beijing,” Problems of Post-Communism, Vol. 66, No. 4, 2019, pp. 268–286.

6 Korolev, 2019, p. 29.

7 Vassily Kashin, “Is the Conflict Inevitable? Not at All. How Reasonable Are Western Expectations of a Russia-China Confrontation?” Russia in Global Affairs, Vol. 17, No. 3, 2017

8 Andrej Krickovic, “The Symbiotic China-Russia Partnership: Cautious Riser and Desperate Challenger,” Chinese Journal of International Politics, Vol. 10, No. 3, 2017, pp. 299–329.

9 Chris Miller, “Will Russia’s Pivot to Asia Last?” Orbis, Winter 2020. See also Mikhail Karpov, “The Grandeur and Miseries of Russia’s ‘Turn to the East’: Russian-Chinese ‘Strategic Partnership’ in the Wake of the Ukraine Crisis and Western Sanctions,” Russia in Global Affairs, Vol. 16, No. 3, 2018.

10 Carla P. Freeman, “New Strategies for an Old Rivalry? China–Russia Relations in Central Asia After the Energy Boom,” Pacific Review, Vol. 31, No. 5, 2018, pp. 635–654.

11 Liselotte Odgaard, “Beijing’s Quest for Stability in Its Neighborhood: China’s Relations with Russia in Central Asia,” Asian Security, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2017, pp. 41–58.

12 Jake Rudnitsky and Evgenia Pismennaya, “Russia Closes Border With China to People, Not Goods,” Bloomberg News, January 30, 2020,  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-30/russia-closing-border-with-china-to-affect-people-not-goods.

13 Andrew Higgins, “Businesses Getting Killed on Russian Border as Coronavirus Fears Rise,” New York Times, February 24, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/24/world/europe/coronavirus-russia-china-commerce.html.

14 Van Ivej, “Выход из Кризиса и Преимущества Китая, [Exit from Crisis and China’s Advantages],” Russia in Global Affairs, April 1, 2020, https://globalaffairs.ru/articles/vyhod-iz-krizisa-i-preimushhestva-kitaya/; Fyodor Lukyanov, “Вирус Разнообразия [Virus of Diversity],” Russia in Global Affairs, March 25, 2020, https://globalaffairs.ru/articles/virus-raznoobraziya/.

15 Michael Kofman, “Towards a Sino-Russian Entente?” Riddle, November 29, 2019, https://www.ridl.io/en/towards-a-sino-russian-entente.

16 Siemon Wezeman, “China, Russia and the Shifting Landscape of Arms Sales,” Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, July 5, 2017, https://www.sipri.org/commentary/topical-backgrounder/2017/china-russia-and-shifting-landscape-arms-sales.

17 Dmitry Stefanovich, “Russia to Help China Develop an Early Warning System,” The Diplomat, October 25, 2019, https://thediplomat.com/2019/10/russia-to-help-china-develop-an-early-warning-system.

18 Daniel Urchik, “What We Learned from Peace Mission 2018,” Small Wars Journalundated, https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/what-we-learned-peace-mission-2018.

19 Chris Buckley, “Russia to Join China in Naval Exercise in Disputed South China Sea,” New York Times, July 29, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/29/world/asia/russia-china-south-china-sea-naval-exercise.html and Andrew Higgins, “China and Russia Hold First Joint Naval Drill in the Baltic Sea,” New York Times, July 25, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/world/europe/china-russia-baltic-navy-exercises.html.

20 Andrew Osborn, “Russia, China, Iran Start Joint Naval Drills in Indian Ocean,” Reuters, December 27, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-military-russia-china/russia-china-iran-start-joint-naval-drills-in-indian-ocean-idUSKBN1YV0IB.

21 Franz-Stefan Gady, “The Significance of the First Ever China-Russia Strategic Bomber Patrol,” The Diplomat, July 25, 2019, https://thediplomat.com/2019/07/the-significance-of-the-first-ever-china-russia-strategic-bomber-patrol/.

22 “China to Send 1,600 Troops, About 30 Aircraft to Russia’s Strategic Military Drills,” TASS, August 29, 2019, https://tass.com/defense/1075535.

23 Paul Schwartz, “The Military Dimension in Sino-Russian Relations,” in Jo Inge Bekkevold and Bobo Lo, eds. Sino-Russian Relations in the 21st Century, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), p. 105.

24 Eric Berger, “Russia Now Looking to Sell Its Prized Rocket Engines to China,” Ars Technica, January 18, 2018, https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/01/russia-now-looking-to-sell-its-prized-rocket-engines-to-china.

25 Robert S. Ross, “Sino‑Russian Relations: The False Promise of Russian Balancing,” International Politics, September 2019.

26 Krickovic, 2017.

27 John M. Owen IV, “Sino‑Russian Cooperation Against Liberal Hegemony,” International Politics, January 2020.