Pavel K. Baev
Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin on August 31 and September 1, and the Victory Day military parade on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on September 3.
Putin likely needed to take measure of PRC President Xi Jinping’s opinions on the decision to sustain offensive operations in Ukraine, as the Russian war machine is heavily dependent upon supplies from the PRC.
It appears that the PRC has made it clear that it does not want Russia to lose the war, but the social impacts of attrition cannot be estimated with certainty, and Xi likely does not want to see a crisis for Putin’s regime.
On Wednesday, September 3, there will be a massive and impeccably choreographed parade in Beijing, the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Russian President Vladimir Putin will be in attendance and will likely compare it to his own pompous show for the 80th anniversary of Victory Day on May 9 (RBC, August 29). Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping appears as keen as Putin to make history into a justification of high political ambitions (Kommersant, August 30). The PRC is marking the 80th anniversary not only of the defeat of Japanese aggression during World War II, but also the end of the long century of perceived humiliation by various imperialist powers—one of which was, in fact, Russia. The parade on Red Square in Moscow on May 9 was supposed to draw a direct parallel between the victory over Nazi Germany and the resolve to bring the “special military operation” against Ukraine to a triumphant conclusion, which currently remains unattainable (see EDM, May 6, 8, 12).
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