{"id":738,"date":"2026-05-19T21:05:02","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T21:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=738"},"modified":"2026-05-19T21:05:02","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T21:05:02","slug":"as-a-weakened-putin-follows-trump-to-beijing-iran-war-offers-an-opening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=738","title":{"rendered":"As a weakened Putin follows Trump to Beijing, Iran war offers an opening"},"content":{"rendered":"
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MOSCOW \u2014 President Vladimir Putin of Russia arrived in Beijing on Tuesday for a state visit in a position of relative weakness.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more Republican Senators are livid at Trump\u2019s endorsement of Paxton<\/a><\/p>\n

His army is struggling to move in Ukraine. His seat of power, Moscow, has been increasingly vulnerable to Ukrainian drones. Russia\u2019s economy is under severe strain. More Russians are growing tired of what increasingly looks like a fruitless and endless war.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even in better times for Moscow, its relationship with Beijing has been defined by economic imbalance. \u201cChina has massive leverage and can dictate exactly what it wants from this menu of bilateral cooperation,\u201d said Aleksandr Gabuev, the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Still, Russia is not content being relegated to junior partner to China. Its nuclear arsenal, far larger than Beijing\u2019s, could make it an important ally in any superpower conflict, including over Taiwan. The invasion of Ukraine has positioned Moscow as a leader of an emerging non-Western world order supported by Beijing.<\/span><\/p>\n

And then there is the opening provided by the war against Iran waged by the United States and Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Five days after an architect of that conflict, President Trump, left Beijing at the end of his own state visit, Putin will join the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, for a day of meetings Wednesday.<\/span><\/p>\n

The upheaval that Trump has caused in the Persian Gulf has disrupted energy supplies to China, and Russia has promoted itself as a reliable alternative. Russian officials hope to leverage the Middle East crisis to deepen energy ties with Beijing, including by moving ahead with a stalled pipeline project.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ivan Timofeev, director-general of the Russian International Affairs Council, a think tank cofounded by the country\u2019s Foreign Ministry, said the Middle East conflict showed how Russia could \u201cmitigate for China the risks associated with logistics and the Persian Gulf.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cRussia retains a crucial strategic role here for China in the event of such escalations,\u201d Timofeev said Friday during a news conference in Moscow.<\/span><\/p>\n

By hosting Putin just days after Trump\u2019s visit, Xi is tending to his relationship with his most important strategic partner and casting China as an indispensable global power.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since December, Xi has welcomed to Beijing the leaders of France, Canada, Britain, Germany, and the United States. In his summit with Trump, Xi argued that China and the United States were now peer powers and that they should avoid prioritizing competition.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more US government agrees to drop tax claims against Trump in broadening of IRS lawsuit settlement<\/a><\/p>\n

Putin has been working to position himself advantageously between Trump and Xi.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Russian leader has tried to cultivate Trump, seeking his help in securing a favorable resolution to the invasion of Ukraine and reaping the benefits of renewed business relations after the war.<\/span><\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s ties to Xi, however, run far deeper. The Russian leader has worked to develop a well-documented bond with his Chinese counterpart, calling him his \u201cdear friend\u201d and \u201cbest bosom friend.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Xi is expected to reaffirm that closeness Wednesday.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBoth sides will seize this opportunity to continue to promote the development of China-Russia relations to a deeper and higher level, injecting more stability and positive energy into the world,\u201d a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Guo Jiakun, said Monday.<\/span><\/p>\n

Putin struck a similar note in an address published by the Kremlin on Tuesday before the visit. \u201cThe close strategic relationship between Russia and China plays a major, stabilizing role globally,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cWithout allying against anyone, we seek peace and universal prosperity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In Putin, Xi sees a like-minded leader frustrated by America\u2019s dominance of the global order, said Julian Gewirtz, a senior director for China and Taiwan affairs at the National Security Council in the Biden administration.<\/span><\/p>\n

While Trump lavished praise on the Chinese leader during his visit to Beijing, \u201cXi\u2019s embrace of Putin this week should be a reminder that Beijing\u2019s closest international partners are connected by their shared emphasis on resistance to the United States,\u201d Gewirtz said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Russia and China declared a \u201cno limits\u201d strategic partnership in early 2022, weeks before Moscow invaded Ukraine.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

While the conflict in the Middle East has seemingly reversed Russia\u2019s economic fortunes, even if temporarily, it has more fundamentally turned Moscow into an increasingly indispensable energy supplier for China and other countries.<\/span><\/p>\n

For years, Russia has been trying to push China to go forward with a major new gas pipeline, known as Power of Siberia 2, that would link its Siberian extraction sites with China\u2019s northwest through Mongolia. But Beijing has been hesitant, trying to push for lower energy prices and fearing that the pipeline would deepen its dependence on one supplier too much.<\/span><\/p>\n

The energy shock from the Iran conflict may have upended that dynamic, underscoring the importance for China, the world\u2019s largest importer of natural gas, to diversify its supply options beyond the Middle East.<\/span><\/p>\n

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This article originally appeared in <\/i>The New York Times<\/i>.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the upheaval in the Persian Gulf disrupting oil and gas supplies, Russia is looking to deepen its energy ties to China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"\nAs a weakened Putin follows Trump to Beijing, Iran war offers an opening - Boston Relocation Insider<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/bostonrelocationinsider.com\/?p=738\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"As a weakened Putin follows Trump to Beijing, Iran war offers an opening - 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