Just days after the International Criminal Court issued a war crimes indictment for Vladimir Putin, making him the world’s most famous and most wanted fugitive, Chinese President Xi Jinping traveled to Moscow for a state visit, his 40th meeting with the Kremlin leader.

And while Xi’s visit eased Putin’s international isolation and bolstered Sino-Russian efforts to forge an anti-Western international coalition, it appeared to fall short of providing Putin what he most desires: Chinese pledges of military assistance in Russia’s war against Ukraine. 

Because while Xi did offer Putin moral and economic support in the form of increased trade, he offered no offensive weapons — at least not yet.

So where is the Sino-Russian partnership going? And what does it — and Putin’s indictment for war crimes — mean for Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine? 

On The Power Vertical Podcast this week, host Brian Whitmore speaks with former U.S. State Department official Max Bergmann, director of the Europe and Russia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Jeff Mankoff, a Distinguished Research Fellow at National Defense University’s Institute for National Strategic Studies and author of the recently published book Empires of Eurasia: How Imperial Legacies Shape International Security. 

Listen to the podcast at The Power Vertical here - 

Jeffrey Mankoff is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, Center for Strategic Research at National Defense University. The views expressed are the authors own and do not reflect those of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.