Putin shows off alliance with China to the West in military exercise

With the economic and political effects of the Ukrainian War multiplying, Russian President Vladimir Putin made a choreographed show of unity with his main ally, Xi Jinping’s China.

The stage was the Russian Far East, where the annual military mega-exercise of the Russian Armed Forces takes place. This year, through the rotation scheme with other military regions, Vostok (East) is underway, with maneuvers throughout Eastern Siberia and the Pacific.

As in every year, allied countries are invited to participate. Even because of its geographical proximity, China always sends more troops and equipment to Vostok editions, as happened this year. But there were also countries like India, which maintains a good-neighbor policy with Moscow and Washington at the same time, Syria and Belarus.

Putin personally went to Ussiriisk, home of the main training camp, Sergeyevsky. He donned a military jacket and exchanged jokes and smiles with his Defense Minister Sergei Choigu and the Armed Forces Chief of Staff Valeri Gerasimov. The day before, he had named a hawk in nearby Kamchatka after Storm, a military unit fighting in Donbass (eastern Ukraine).

Afterwards, the Russian went to Vladivostok, headquarters of the Russian Pacific Fleet and the largest city in the region, where he will speak at an economic forum and will meet with the number three in the government hierarchy of the Chinese communist dictatorship, Li Zhanshu.

It is Putin’s main meeting with a Chinese official in person since he was in Beijing for the opening of the Winter Olympics with Xi, 20 days before the start of the February 24 invasion of Ukraine.

All of this is aimed at the West, with the aim of demonstrating unity between Moscow and Beijing at a time when the world is progressively dividing due to the effects of Russian aggression against Kiev. European governments are preparing to face political pressure stemming from the effects of Russian gas cuts to the mainland, a side effect of sanctions imposed on Moscow.

The Russians, in turn, are increasingly anchored in Beijing and New Delhi to divert the flow of oil and gas exports, aiming to restructure their foreign trade – which does not happen overnight. Countries far from the conflict, such as Brazil, maintain economic neutrality to make gains, but they know that the Cold War 2.0 division could lead to the formation of political blocs.

In Ussiriissk, Russian and Chinese forces simulated attacks and counter-attacks on command posts. Not far away, off the Pacific coast, a Russian ship fired a Kalibr cruise missile at a target 300 km away.

Meanwhile, in real life, the same armed model hit Ukrainian fuel depots near the Mikolaiv front, which focuses Kiev’s effort on trying to break through the defenses of the occupied Kherson territory.

Russian and Chinese ships have already completed the most important stage of the exercise, of coordinated fire training. But the Vostok-2022, for all the hype, is a far smaller ploy than usual. Its last edition, in 2018, had been sold as the biggest exercise of its kind since the Cold War, with 300,000 men. The Zapad (West) of 2021 had an alleged 200,000 troops.

The numbers are often disputed by experts, but the Kremlin announced that Vostok-2022 would be smaller, with 50,000 troops.

Despite restrictions and sanctions, the idea of ​​propaganda is also to show that there is slack to fulfill missions other than war. It’s part of the game, otherwise played by the West: American intelligence has leaked a report to the press that Russia is buying North Korean ammunition.

It may be true, given that there is a visible reduction in the use of more sophisticated missiles by the Russians in Ukraine, even because they depend on Western chips, either for lack or for economy for future conflicts with NATO (Western military alliance). But former Soviet stockpiles of less accurate weapons are quite vast, which casts doubt on the story.