The writer is director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin
When EU leaders meet Chinese President Xi Jinping this week, they intend to make his support for Russia a pivotal topic. “China is de facto enabling Russia’s war economy. We cannot accept this . . . How China continues to interact with Putin’s war, will be a determining factor for EU-China relations going forward,” European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said on July 8. She hopes to put pressure on Beijing to distance itself from Russia’s war in Ukraine and thus force Moscow to negotiate with Kyiv in good faith. The problem is that for more than three years, this approach hasn’t worked — and nothing suggests it will now.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi recently told EU officials that Beijing doesn’t want to see Russia lose in Ukraine. That should come as no surprise; it’s not in China’s interests to see its giant nuclear-armed neighbour destabilised, which could be the result of defeat. It also doesn’t want to see the emergence of a liberal Russia that could turn away from its partnership with Beijing. This is why western attempts to pressure China to simply abandon Putin, without outlining an end to the war that would ensure regime continuity in Russia, have yielded no results.