"During a four-hour meeting in Brussels in July 2025, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi reportedly told the European Union's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, that China could not afford a Russian defeat in Ukraine.
This was a simple power calculus: if Russia lost, the United States would be free to shift its full attention to Beijing. The remark came more than three years into the Sino-Russian "no-limits partnership" that Presidents Xi and Putin declared on the eve of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The exchange, first reported by the South China Morning Post and omitted from the Chinese government's official account of the meeting, showed how Beijing actually views the war. China has long presented itself as a neutral party interested in peace. In private, however, its foreign minister in effect acknowledged that Russia's survival as a fighting power serves its global interests.
Beijing's siding with Moscow goes beyond rhetoric, and it goes beyond simply buying a great deal of Russian energy. China has largely replaced Europe as the principal market for Russian hydrocarbons. Before 2022, Russia's energy infrastructure and commercial relationships were heavily oriented toward Europe. Western sanctions and Europe's diversification forced Moscow to redirect enormous volumes eastward, and China absorbed much of it, often at a discount on Russian crude.
Since February 2022, mineral fuels have accounted, on average, for about 70% of the value of China's imports from Russia. The result is a complementary trade: Russia sells commodities, above all energy, and China sells manufactured goods…"
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Armand
snapped some photos of games he didn't get a chance to play in at Council of Five Nations.
