While her relationship Moscow With Washington are experiencing a period of great tension after the interception of an American drone by a Russian fighter in the Black Sea, Vladimir Putin he is gaining significant political support as he prepares to accept his most valuable ally.

OUR Chinese President Xi Jinping will visit Russia on a three-day visit from next Monday to Wednesday, which was announced at the same time Chinese and Russian government. The two leaders will hold one-on-one talks over an informal dinner on Monday evening, followed by extended talks between delegations from the two governments on Tuesday. According to Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin, the focus of discussions will be on strengthening bilateral economic cooperation and strengthening peace.

Overall, the international media expects him to dominate the talks between Putin and Xi. Ukrainian. With the air of his country’s recent success in normalizing relations, the agreement Saudi Arabia – Iran, agreed a week ago in Beijing, the Chinese leader is expected to act as a peacemaker in the Ukraine crisis as well, fleshing out the so far rather vague 12-point peace proposal presented by his country in February. After consultations with Putin, he is expected to have a telephone conversation with the President of Ukraine. Vladimir Zelenskythe harbinger of which was yesterday’s conversation between the foreign ministers of the two countries.

The decision of the International Criminal Court to issue a warrant for the arrest of the Russian president on Friday overshadowed the upcoming meeting between Putin and Xi. A day earlier, the UN Commission of Inquiry into Ukraine accused Russia of war crimes such as forcibly deporting children and destroying energy infrastructure. Moscow has denied the allegations and said the arrest warrant for the Russian president “doesn’t matter”.

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Putin for war crimes.

The ICC has jurisdiction only over the countries that signed the treaty establishing it, and Russia is not one of them, nor is the United States or China.

“We’ll take them down”

In Moscow, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu awarded medals to two pilots of a Russian fighter jet that intercepted an American drone in the Black Sea. In addition, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that the Russian military would shoot down Western aircraft purchased by Ukraine as Slovakia became the second country after Poland to supply Soviet MiG-29 fighter jets to Kiev.

In Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian army continues to put up heavy resistance against Wagner Company mercenaries, who are suffering heavy casualties. CNN report argues that the Russian Defense Ministry is deliberately avoiding the broad assistance that Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin is trying to undermine with his political ambitions. In addition, g.k. NATO’s Jens Stoltenberg and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen visited the Norwegian offshore gas platform in the North Sea yesterday, highlighting the Nordic nation’s key role in Europe’s turning away from Russian gas.

Weapons from Beijing to Moscow via Ankara

Chinese companies, including a state-owned enterprise, sent 1,000 assault rifles and other military equipment through Turkey to Russian legal entities magazine Politico.

According to the customs authorities, the shipment of the material took place between June and December 2022. China North Industries, one of China’s largest state-owned defense companies, delivered automatic weapons to the Russian state-owned company Tek-Krim in June 2022. The CQ-A rifles used by the armies of China, the Philippines, South Sudan and Paraguay are listed in dispatches as “hunting weapons”.

Russian organizations also received 12 shipments of drone parts from Chinese companies and at least 12 tons of Chinese-made bulletproof vests that were shipped through Turkey at the end of 2022. It turned out that China is supplying Russian companies with “dual-use” commercial equipment suitable for use on the battlefield.

Russia has depended on other countries for months for aviation navigation equipment, satellite imagery, auto parts and raw materials to fill the gap caused by Western sanctions. “Some commercial products, such as drones and microchips, could be adapted for use in particularly deadly weapons of war,” Sam Bendet, a research fellow at the US Navy’s Institute for Russian Studies, told Politico. However, experts explain that identifying and tracing Chinese “dual-use” goods is very difficult.

In those cases when the Kremlin absolutely needs some high-tech product, which is produced exclusively, for example, in the US, the EU. or Japan, it is bought by intermediaries in countries with good relations with the West. In 2022, Turkey sold about 80 tons of Turkish body armor worth $10 million to Russia. The Russian defense industry in 2022 imported chips, night vision devices and spare parts for aircraft engines from countries such as China, Serbia and Myanmar. The “dual-use” equipment is a way for China to bolster its support for Moscow without being subject to sanctions.

Beijing, for its part, categorically denies offering purely military assistance to Moscow. However, many Chinese officials have recently visited Moscow, and President Xi Jinping is expected to arrive in the Russian capital in the coming days. “The West has begun to move towards sanctions against those who supply military equipment to Russia,” says James Byrne, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute in London.