The full-scale war in Ukraine did not alter the fundamental nature of Russia-China relations, but it significantly accelerated trends that had already been underway since 2014. Military cooperation has grown more intense, political coordination tighter, and Moscow’s economic dependence on Beijing more pronounced. Yet both sides continue to avoid a formal alliance, preserving maximum room for foreign policy maneuver.
Political Transformation of Russia-China Relations
Personal ties between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping remain the central driver of the bilateral relationship. The high level of mutual trust between the two leaders enables Moscow and Beijing to reach understandings on highly sensitive issues without building rigid formal mechanisms.
During Putin’s most recent visit to China, the two sides extended the Treaty on Good-Neighborliness, Friendship and Cooperation. No announcement was made, however, about establishing a military alliance or moving toward deeper interstate integration.
After 2022, some observers expected a radical shift in the existing model. One camp predicted that China would begin to distance itself from Russia and align more closely with Western sanctions. The other anticipated rapid integration and the emergence of a full-fledged political or even military alliance. Neither scenario materialized.
In official statements, the relationship is still described as a “comprehensive partnership and strategic interaction entering a new era.” Behind this cumbersome phrasing lies a key reality: neither Russia nor China is prepared to accept clearly defined obligations or convert the partnership into a formal alliance.
This approach is driven by more than simple caution or mutual suspicion. The lack of binding commitments leaves both capitals with greater freedom of action — both in their bilateral dealings and in their relations with third countries. Moscow and Beijing prefer to engage the United States, the European Union, Middle Eastern states, and others on their own terms, without having to constantly factor in the other’s position.
This flexibility is both the relationship’s greatest strength and its most significant weakness.
Its strength lies in the absence of rigid legal frameworks. Relations can adapt relatively quickly to changing international circumstances because they rest largely on informal understandings between Putin and Xi. This model allows both sides to bypass cumbersome bureaucratic procedures and reach decisions at the highest level.
The corresponding weakness is equally clear. Over the years, Russia and China have not built a robust institutional infrastructure for bilateral cooperation. The relationship remains overly dependent on personal contacts between the leaders and top-down political signals. Such a system is ill-suited to resolving routine practical problems. It can generate grand political declarations about a “multipolar world,” opposition to U.S. hegemony, or support for the Global South, but it struggles with concrete tasks at the level of ministries, regions, banks, and companies.
Personal ties have their limits, as practice has shown. Putin was unable to secure BRICS partners’ support for a single BRICS currency. Despite sustained efforts, the final agreement on the Power of Siberia-2 pipeline remains stalled. When the discussion moves from lofty principles to actual money and investment projects, even the warmest personal relationships do not always deliver results.
A change of leadership in either Moscow or Beijing would expose this model’s vulnerability. The system lacks an automatic mechanism to preserve continuity. Moreover, any new leadership would inevitably devote considerable attention to consolidating its domestic position.
Russia’s next presidential election is scheduled for 2030. The Chinese Communist Party’s 21st Congress will take place in autumn 2027; it is there that it will become clear whether Xi Jinping remains in power or a successor is designated. Most experts expect Xi to stay in charge, meaning that in the foreseeable future Russia-China relations will continue to be shaped primarily by personal understandings between Putin and Xi.
The Role of the United States
At the same time, a noticeable shift has occurred in Russia’s expert community and, it appears, within the broader political class. Russia now views the European Union and the United States not merely as supporters of Ukraine, but as direct participants in the conflict and potential adversaries. In this environment, the prospect of normalizing relations with the West looks increasingly remote. The old “reverse Kissinger” strategy — attempting to pull Russia away from China by repairing ties with Washington — has also lost relevance.
For a long time, Russia and China lacked a shared foreign policy direction. Moscow advocated openly for a “multipolar world” and challenged Western dominance. Beijing adopted a more cautious stance. As one of the principal beneficiaries of the existing international order, China had little interest in its sudden collapse and continued to integrate more deeply into it.
Rather than direct confrontation, China preferred to expand its influence gradually, positioning itself as a champion of the Global South and capitalizing on developing countries’ dissatisfaction with the current system. While Russian policy aimed at openly revising the existing order, Chinese policy focused on transforming it from within.
Over time, a common foreign policy vector has emerged, and it is becoming increasingly anti-American. This does not mean, however, that Russia and China are forming a single bloc or that their goals fully align. Their interests, capabilities, and visions of an optimal world order still differ in important ways. What increasingly binds them is opposition to U.S. influence — a political framework stronger than formal treaties or ideological slogans.
Military Cooperation
The year 2022 did not change the substance of Russia-China military cooperation so much as its pace and scale. Before February 2022, the two countries developed military-technical ties because the partnership was mutually beneficial. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the process accelerated sharply: Russia lost access to Western alternatives, while China’s strategic interest in Moscow grew amid its own confrontation with the United States.
Following the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the imposition of Western sanctions, Russia lost partial access to Western technology, financing, and markets. This prompted Moscow to accelerate its pivot toward China as an alternative source of investment, equipment, and credit. Russian leaders gradually dropped earlier concerns about transferring sensitive military technologies to Beijing. What had been actively debated as a risk in the 2000s had, by the mid-2010s, become a consensus in Moscow: the potential political and economic gains outweighed the downsides.
China’s logic was different. Russia’s defense industry remained one of the few external sources of technology that could accelerate the modernization of the People’s Liberation Army in areas critical to a potential conflict with the United States and its allies. For Moscow, military-technical cooperation brought export revenue, strengthened political ties with Beijing, and helped bolster a strategic rival of Washington without entering a formal alliance.
The cost was clear. Russia effectively agreed to transfer a range of technologies despite documented cases of subsequent unlicensed copying by Chinese firms. Even so, in the second half of the 2010s Russia’s defense sector retained a noticeable technological edge in several key areas, including air defense systems, aircraft engines, radar, and certain submarine technologies.
Importantly, Russia-China military-technical cooperation was never a closed subject during this period. It was discussed quite openly in Russian media. For Russia’s defense industry, the Chinese market was both politically significant and commercially attractive, fitting neatly into the broader strategy of promoting Russian arms exports. Much of what is now portrayed as a sudden military rapprochement actually has a long and well-documented public history.
A three-year roadmap for bilateral military cooperation was agreed as early as 2017. The real turning point came in 2018. After the U.S.-China trade war began, Beijing’s interest in strategic technology cooperation with Russia increased markedly, and interaction moved beyond standard arms sales.
One of the clearest examples was the delivery of S-400 air defense systems to China. Although the deal was officially announced after extensive coverage in the Russian press, negotiations had been underway since the early 2010s. For China, the systems were especially valuable for strengthening its position in a potential Taiwan contingency and in the broader U.S. rivalry in the Asia-Pacific. Notably, Rosoboronexport’s leadership expressed no public concern about working with Chinese industry. When asked whether Russian companies feared cooperating with Chinese partners, then-director Anatoly Isaikin replied bluntly: “If we are working in the interests of the PRC, then we are also working in our own interests.”
An even more significant signal came in October 2019, when Putin publicly stated that Russia was assisting China in developing a missile attack early warning system (SPRN). Cooperation at this level in the strategic nuclear domain had rarely been discussed openly before.
The SPRN is among the most sensitive components of strategic deterrence. Until then, only Russia and the United States possessed fully operational systems of this type. The precise scope of Russian involvement remains undisclosed — it may have included ground- or space-based sensors, software, data processing, or several elements combined. The very fact that the cooperation was acknowledged publicly, however, pointed to an unprecedented level of trust between the two states.
This episode reveals Moscow’s underlying calculation. The Russian approach was less about “Russia and China versus the United States” and more about pragmatic realpolitik: transferring technologies that posed no immediate threat to Russian security while increasing costs for Washington. Parts of the Russian expert community openly supported this logic, viewing SPRN cooperation as a way to strengthen ties with a key partner, generate revenue from technology exports, and impose additional strategic burdens on the U.S. with minimal risk to Russia itself.
Neither Moscow nor Beijing sees a formal military alliance as necessary. Experts and political elites in both countries agree on this point. The more likely path forward is therefore not a permanent alliance, but time- and geography-limited agreements tailored to specific military tasks, with clearly defined forms of mutual support.
A Central Asian Scenario for Russia?
If Russia’s isolation persists, China will likely manage its relationship with Moscow according to the model it has already refined with Central Asian states. This approach features demonstrative respect for the sitting leadership, a firm refusal to interfere publicly in domestic politics, systematic engagement with state and business elites, and the gradual embedding of Chinese economic interests into local production, logistics, and technological networks.
The appearance of formal equality will be preserved far longer than actual equality. China will continue to recognize Russia’s great-power status, highlight the special character of the bilateral relationship, and extend full diplomatic courtesies to the Russian leader. The substance of cooperation, however, will be shaped increasingly by economic asymmetry: Russia’s dependence on Chinese markets, equipment, components, finance, and transport infrastructure will grow faster than any reciprocal dependence on Russia.
This does not imply Russia becoming another Central Asian republic. It will retain its nuclear arsenal, permanent seat on the UN Security Council, independent military capabilities, and global ambitions. Instead, Russia would gradually assume a position in China’s foreign policy framework functionally similar to that of Central Asian states: a politically respected and strategically useful neighbor that is nevertheless becoming more economically dependent.
Such a shift could widen the gap between elites and society. Russia’s political and business upper class, which benefits from Chinese investment, markets, and technology, would likely dampen public criticism of growing Chinese influence. At the regional level, however, concerns over resource extraction, environmental risks, competition with local businesses, and Russia’s transformation into a raw-materials supplier and consumer market would probably intensify. Official rhetoric about an “equal strategic partnership” would increasingly diverge from the lived reality of economic dependence.
What Comes Next?
In the long run, Moscow’s and Beijing’s interests do not fully coincide. There is, however, one scenario in which Russia’s strategic value to China would rise sharply: a direct military clash between China and the United States or its allies in the Asia-Pacific. In that case, Russia could supply China with oil, gas, and other raw materials while providing overland logistics routes less vulnerable to naval blockade.
This is why calls for a tougher Chinese stance toward the United States appear more frequently in Russian expert and near-government circles. The argument usually rests on the assumption that conflict with Washington is inevitable, so Beijing would be better off choosing the timing and conditions itself. These statements do not necessarily represent the Kremlin’s official position, but they show that segments of Russia’s political class view an intensified U.S.-China confrontation as strategically advantageous for Russia.
For Moscow, U.S. entanglement in a major Asia-Pacific crisis would mean the diversion of American military, financial, and political resources. Russia therefore has an objective interest in keeping Sino-American rivalry as acute as possible. For China, the same logic is far less appealing. Beijing seeks to avoid war and preserve conditions that allow continued economic development and a gradual shift in the global balance of power in its favor.
Since 2022, what has changed most is not Russia itself, but the role Russia plays in Chinese foreign policy. For Beijing, Moscow is evolving from an independent pole of power into a useful component of China’s broader strategy of global competition with the United States. Russia remains a nuclear power and China’s most important political partner, yet it is increasingly integrated into Chinese foreign policy logic rather than shaping it. This may well prove to be the principal political legacy of the Russia-China rapprochement of the past five years.
