(VOA) Thousands of miles away from the Ukrainian battlefields of Donetsk and Novoazovsk sits the country that may end up being the largest beneficiary of the turmoil along Russia’s southwest border: China.
With Russian President Vladimir Putin rewriting the playbook on security in post-Cold War Europe, Beijing has watched warily 3,700 miles to the east, though without protest or interference.
Its abstention from a U.N. Security Council resolution vote in March that condemned Russia’s annexation of Crimea was unusual, given Beijing’s traditional stance on such votes, but it comes as bilateral ties have been on the upswing for years now. […]
Goodwill with Beijing is important, and by keeping China unthreatened, Moscow helps secure its “strategic rear,” said Andrew Kuchins, director of the Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“It’s important for them, and I think particularly for Russia, to create mutual vulnerabilities which helps to secure those rears so that China will not move in the direction of Russia in a military way,” Kuchins said at a recent roundtable discussion in Washington.
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