Russian President Vladimir Putin is strengthening ties with India following his engagement with North Korea, signaling potential cracks in the Russia-China relationship.
According to Bloomberg, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Russia for the first time in five years. “There have been no summit talks between the two countries recently, so there are numerous issues to resolve on our bilateral agenda,” Modi said.
India has been a long-standing ally of Russia since the Cold War era, and Russia is India’s largest supplier of weapons and oil. Even after the Ukraine war, India has continued to import Russian crude oil, maintaining strong relations between the two countries.
Despite India’s closeness to Russia, it has long conflicted with China due to border disputes. As Putin gets closer to India, which is at odds with China, there is growing interest in whether this will affect China-Russia relations. When Putin visited North Korea, there were analyses that it was not entirely good news for China. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) pointed out that “the growing nuclear and missile threats from North Korea could trigger more U.S. military presence in the region, which is a concern for China.”
There are already signs of an unusual atmosphere between China and Russia. According to Japan’s Nikkei, the Chinese government recently banned high-level officials from bringing work smartphones to Russia to prevent the leakage of state secrets.
On the other hand, last week, Elvira Nabiullina, the Governor of the Central Bank of Russia, sternly warned China about yuan transactions. At a meeting with reporters, Nabiullina said, “The settlement issue is one of the main challenges facing the Russian economy,” and “The authorities are considering all possible risks, including the suspension of yuan exchange transactions.”
The Russian authorities have become more dependent on the yuan as Western financial sanctions have intensified due to the Ukraine war. However, discord has arisen as several Chinese state-owned banks recently stopped funding Russian companies. The actions of the Chinese banks follow the U.S. Treasury’s announcement in December last year that it would impose secondary boycotts on foreign banks dealing with companies supporting the Russian defense industry.
Nikkei reported that Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Putin have declared during their summits that “there are no limits to the friendship between the two countries.” Despite such public declarations of solidarity, the publication noted that genuine trust between the two nations remains elusive. It added that a significant potential disruptor to their unity could be the return of the Donald Trump administration in the United States. Although Trump maintained a favorable relationship with Putin during his presidency, he is expected to adopt a tough stance against China, including the imposition of high tariffs, from the start of his term.
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