Kyiv, Ukraine – Volodymyr, a thin 44-year-old, has recently returned from the front lines of eastern Ukraine and now needs psychological help for his post-traumatic stress disorder.
A bruise makes him stutter a little.
He eagerly reads news from the cracked screen of his mobile phone – and has strong opinions about recent headlines about the role of China, Russia’s only remaining corner heavyweight partner, in the war.
“China prefers to stay away from this mess,” Volodymyr tells Al Jazeera, withholding his last name because he is still on active duty. “They will never openly support Russia.”
Open is a key word.
As the Russo-Ukrainian war approaches its 15th month, China still views President Vladimir Putin as an irreplaceable, “strategic” ally.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has remained the only world leader to maintain friendly ties with Putin — and has used China’s seat on the United Nations Security Council to fend off diplomatic attacks on the Kremlin.
Xi never denounced the war, but rather called it a “crisis”.
According to Ukrainian observers, Beijing’s position is full of ambivalence and omissions.
According to some, Xi sees the conflict through the prism of Taiwan, as China has long threatened to forcibly “unite” the self-governing island with the communist mainland in a manner similar to how Russia “gave back” Crimea.
While he now appears to be trying to add a peacekeeper’s feather to his cap, observers say he could in fact be trying to freeze the war on Russia’s terms to allow it to replenish its arsenals, train more military and to transform its wartime economy.
“China doesn’t need a pompous truce,” sinologist Petro Shevchenko of Jilin University in the Chinese city of Changchun told Al Jazeera. “In principle, it will settle for some kind of freeze if Ukraine does not declare the end of the war.”
Beijing has said Ukraine’s “territorial integrity” must be maintained – and in February proposed a 12-point peace plan that was met with skepticism by Western powers. While it called for dialogue and denounced the possibility of a nuclear escalation, the plan also denounced Western sanctions against Moscow and did not urge Russia to withdraw troops.
To convince Kiev, Beijing will “recourse to economic statesmanship, economic tools,” which may include contributing to Ukraine’s post-war recovery and better access to the Chinese market for Ukrainian food producers, Shevchenko said.
It could be easy.
In 2017, China became Ukraine’s largest trading partner. It buys wheat, corn, jet engines and steel plates, among other things.
Beijing also wants Ukraine to become a hub of the massive Belt and Road infrastructure project stretching across Eurasia from Pakistan to Poland – a role Kiev rejected after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.
But if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejects China’s peace offer, Xi could begin supplying Russia with weapons, including drones and microchips, Shevchenko said.
The move could be particularly damaging, as many Chinese weapons are based on Soviet prototypes.
Beijing could also silently urge North Korea and Iran to send arms and ammunition to Moscow, he said.
But Ukraine’s former top diplomat thinks this is something Beijing won’t dare.
“China must not cross the border, otherwise it will face many problems – not only economic, but also political,” Volodymyr Ohryzko, Ukraine’s former foreign minister, told Al Jazeera.
A profitable standstill
Xi does not lavishly push both sides to a truce, preferring to bide his time without getting too caught up in the conflict.
“Russia plays the role of an international gangster who shakes the world order. The US and China are benefiting from the process – and will create a new one [world order]”Kiev-based analyst Igar Tyshkevich told Al Jazeera.
China consumes Russia’s hydrocarbons, uses its territory as a springboard to European markets and craves the Arctic riches that Moscow cannot tap alone.
The existing status quo, in which Western sanctions isolate Russia and the collective West is deeply invested in the war, is “generally comfortable for Beijing,” said Temur Umarov, a sinologist and expert at Carnegie Politika, a Berlin-based think tank.
“In this situation, the US does not have the reach to start a conflict with China, to find out what is happening in China, to confront it, while Russia is increasingly giving Beijing because it has no other options. ” he told Al Jazeera.
China wouldn’t mind repeating the diplomatic success it had in March when it brokered a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
But that happened because both sides wanted a settlement, Umarov said.
“Using the same optics in Ukraine is very difficult, because neither Kiev nor Moscow are ready for any form,” he said.
‘Vassasization’ of Russia?
Oleksandra Kurenenko, who teaches physics at a private school in Kiev, said that if China “openly” supports Russia, Russia will win the war.
But so far “we are winning,” she said.
Beijing casts its stance as “neutral,” but many in Kiev question the term.
“This is a pro-Russian neutrality while China carries out the vassalization of Russia,” Alexander Merezhko, a top foreign policy official in the Verkhovna Rada, the lower house of Ukraine’s parliament, told reporters in mid-May.
As Moscow faces growing economic isolation and diplomatic exclusion, its role as a global or even regional player is declining – and Beijing is filling the void even in Russia’s ex-Soviet territory from Central Asia to Belarus.
While the West is becoming less dependent on Russia’s energy supply and imposing draconian sanctions, Moscow is boosting the export of oil, gas, coal and timber to China – at reduced prices.
Russia’s reduced, “junior” share in the alliance with China seems especially ironic, given that Soviet Russia played a key role in installing a communist government in Beijing in 1949.
Red Moscow also laid the foundations of China’s revival by providing key technologies, from the construction of ironworks to the development of a nuclear bomb.
Visits and envoys
Xi visited Moscow in March but cut short the trip.
He also thwarted Putin’s expectations of making deals on huge investments and the construction of a new natural gas pipeline to China.
Just a month after leaving Moscow, Xi called Zelenskyy, and the immediate outcome was miniscule.
Summarizing their hour-long conversation, Zelenskyy tweeted about a “powerful impetus for bilateral ties” and praised the appointment of a seasoned diplomat as special peace envoy to Kyiv.
The diplomat, Li Hui, was ambassador to Russia between 2009 and 2019. He speaks fluent Russian, is on friendly terms with Putin and even received an award from the Kremlin chief.
But for Kiev, that knowledge of Russia is a plus.
“No doubt this man absolutely understands how wild Russian society is,” Zelensky’s adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said in late April.
Li arrived in Kiev on May 16 and met Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba.
“Ukraine will not accept proposals that entail the loss of its territory or the freezing of the conflict,” Kuleba’s office said in a statement after the meeting, which ended as expected without a breakthrough.