China sagt der EU, dass es sich nicht russischen Verlust im Ukrainekrieg leisten kann, sagen Quellen

Chinese FM Wang Yi told EU leaders, including the bloc’s top diplomat, that the PRC cannot afford a Russian loss in Ukraine because it would mean, in Beijing’s view, that the US would thereafter turn its full attention to strategic competition with China.

SCMP scooped the minister’s remarks and noted that they surprised multiple EU attendees, who long expected that the PRC wants the US to remain embroiled in the Ukraine War but had not heard Chinese officials say as much publicly or even privately.

Speaking personally as a US-based political scientist, this news will come as no surprise to the Trump Administration. In fact, IMO they could and perhaps will use this article as fodder to cite when they consider limiting additional military support to Kyiv.

Doesn’t this, un-ironically, support Trump’s plan/motivation to bring an end to this war, even if it costs Ukraine territory?

Not sure that is a good trade-off, fwiw. But I’m also a bit worried about the world where China becomes (more?) expansionist.

Wang Yi is incompetent, like the last Chinese FM. But part of the problem is that it’s increasingly difficult for China rectify its hostile foreign policy with its need to retain commercial and diplomatic ties to other developed nations.

This war is largely already a strategic defeat for Russia. It retains control over the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant but aside from that will have economically and militarily exhausted itself in exchange for mostly strategically useless buffer territory.

In the end even if Russia cannibalizes more Ukrainian territory, the cost will be too great for it to ever be worth it. The best Russia can hope for is a sort of Pyrrhic victory that it can sell its domestic population as a sort of reaffirmation of its Great Power status. In the end Russia will end up more diplomatically isolated and dependent on China than ever.

Putin may convince himself that by prolonging the war he can stave off this outcome but I think there’s only so long he can stave off the inevitable.

In any case for China, the United States is already fully shifting its priorities to East Asia and extricating itself from Europe. Had China played its cards differently it would have been in a position to exploit this and perhaps even drive a wedge in the Trans Atlantic alliance. But they overplayed their hand and there’s no turning back for them now.