International relations is a tough game. International trade without a free market is just as tough. In late September 2023 Moscow mayor, and formerly presidential administrator Sergei Sobyanin, said what the Kremlin thinks but avoids saying. In turning to the East after the West imposed sanctions, the Russians have faced new difficulties. “We have to understand that Eastern markets are even tougher. There they are already in a serious war with us: an economic war.” People had to understand that in the East “no one wants to hand over technology – in the field of machine-building, in aviation construction, or in the field of microelectronics.” If Russia wants the technology, it has to buy the finished product.

  And it is not just in the field of technology. The embargo on Russia’s natural gas by most of Europe has meant that Putin needed the Chinese to fill the gap; which, indeed, they have done. But one can always have too much of a good thing, even when it comes cheaply. And the Chinese now have more than enough. Russian gas supplies to China reached all time records at the end of last month.

   Russia, however, really has only China as its major customer for gas, just as it has been relying on India to buy its embargoed oil at reduced rates. And the Indians have not been willing to pay the Russians for oil in a currency that the Russians can use outside India.

    And now the Chinese are being difficult. They see no reason to enter into the construction of expensive infrastructure to enhance dependence on Russian gas any further. They have other sources of ready supply in Central Asia where they can get an even better deal without forking out more to enhance dependence on one supplier.

    Western sanctions are still biting.

“Sobyanin zayavil ob ekonomicheskoi voine s vostochnymi stranami”, Ekonomika, 28 September 2023.

Ol’ga Samofalova, “Почему Китай не решается на новый газопровод из России”, Vzglyad, 2 February 2024