China Exploits Advantage Over Weak Putin

What's a little power play among tyrants!?

China's leader, Xi Jinping, has called a meeting of former-Soviet Central Asian countries, in an audacious power play in Russia's backyard the week of his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Xi invited the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan to the first China-Central Asia summit on Wednesday, the AFP news agency reported. It remains unclear whether Turkmenistan has been invited.

The states are all former members of the Soviet Union, and Moscow has long regarded them as being in its sphere of influence after the Russian Empire conquered them in the 19th century.  [snip]

Analysts say that China has secured significant leverage over Russia in return for its diplomatic and economic support, and that in calling the meeting of Central Asian nations it is seeking to exploit that advantage.

"I'm not sure this China initiate is greeted with enthusiasm in the Kremlin," tweeted Carl Bildt, the cochair of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

You don't say.

Russia, in launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year, sought to regain its control over the former Soviet state, which in recent years sought closer ties with the West.

But the invasion has stalled, amid steep military losses for Russia, and a knock-on effect has been that the former Soviet states in Central Asia have become increasingly open in their defiance of the Kremlin.

In one striking example, Kazakhstan's president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, declined to recognize the legitimacy claims by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine while sharing a stage with Putin at an economic forum in St. Petersburg.

China in recent years has increased its economic and security ties with Central Asian nations, which have abundant mineral resources and lie on ancient trade routes between east and west.

On that last point, China is heavily invested in Xi's Belt and Road Initiative involving those same Central Asian nations.  Xi began the massive infrastructure project in 2013 with the aim of further linking China economically and politically to Central Asia, Europe, and beyond, through the overland Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road.  He was already knee-deep in Putin's back yard, and now there's nothing keeping him out.

Through his criminal, catastrophic adventure in Ukraine, Putin has not only isolated, impoverished, and humiliated Russia, but has now de facto handed over economic primacy in resource- rich Central Asia to his ambitious senior partner and fellow tyrant.  If he was trying to destroy Russia, the little tsar couldn't have gone about it in a more effective manner.

(Photo:  Xi has plans for you, Putin)