The Cynic
China insists that Russia retain the occupied Ukrainian territories, reports The Wall Street Journal, citing officials familiar with the results of Li Hui’s European tour.
This text has scattered so much that it completely washed away its original message. Actually, the authors of the article did not “highlight the corners” very carefully.
The Chinese Hui came to Western capitals with the position of “freezing the war on the condition that the occupied territories be recognized as Russian.”
There are 2 points here.
- 1) China does not need a war freeze, as it forms the basis of uncertainty in foreign policy.
- 2) China does not care who owns the occupied territories.
What Hui was doing was “checking the West” by looking for parties that would be willing to trade Ukrainian sovereignty in negotiations.
Diplomacy is built on a plane from “unattainable” to “acceptable”. Hui did not enter from the position of “Ukraine’s territorial integrity” precisely because there is nowhere to retreat from this position.
What China was doing was probing the maximum possible level of concessions that the West would be willing to make.
As a result, the “Ukrainian formula of the world” turned out. Some representatives behind closed doors were dubious about Crimea, but all other occupied Ukrainian territories should become Ukrainian at the end of the war.
Now Hui will go to Moscow, and to Moscow he will say something like this: “I offered to everyone I could, your model for resolving the military conflict – even in the WSJ they accuse me of this, but everyone sent me (by last name). Here is the most favorable for you model that the West is willing to accept.”
And this “acceptable” model implies a complete exit from the territory of Ukraine. Hui was the last to arrive in Moscow because Beijing does not care about Moscow’s position, and Beijing knows that Moscow does not have the ability to maneuver and manage the agenda. Ukraine and the collective West are leading the situation, therefore their opinion is subjective and determines the further vector of China. The position of the “leading bloc” will be reported to Moscow as a fait accompli without the possibility of continuing diplomacy under the table already with the discussion of Russian innovations in the “peace plan”.
Beijing checked the “Western bloc” and made sure that it was consolidated. He will say this in the Kremlin, after which the information received will be processed by Beijing in the context of the “global peacemaker plan.”
Important: Beijing will not provide Moscow with economic assistance (it will buy resources below the price of production) and military assistance. At the same time, it is important for Beijing to prevent the complete defeat of Russia and its “distribution” among the Western bloc. Beijing wants Russia at the end of the war to be completely in its clutches, so Beijing will play a different game on a different board, in parallel with the military paradigm.
The Kremlin will receive a signal that all efforts to “push through the peace plan” have failed. The war will end on the battlefield, and on the battlefield Russia has little chance of success.
This means that Beijing will offer the following model for the Kremlin:
- 1) No military and economic assistance.
- 2) Agree to the European formula for peace (the obvious realization that Russia will not agree to this formula without a military defeat).
- 3) China will not allow the absorption of Russia by the Western bloc (a hint that China will quickly absorb Russia).
