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TOPIC: china russia

Geopolitics

How Western Technology Is Keeping Russia Stocked With Drones

In spite of commonly-held beliefs that the Russian military is fighting with outdated weaponry and uncoordinated assaults, the truth is that complex weaponry is still making its war onto the Russian side on the front, even in spite of technology sanctions from the West.

-Analysis-

KYIV — How many times have we heard about how Russia is forced to fight with Soviet weapons and capture cities exclusively with barbaric, uncoordinated assaults?

This is only partly true.

Russia has numerous weapons that create serious problems for the Ukrainian Armed Forces. One prime example is the Lancet kamikaze drone. It sneaks beneath radars, its electric motor does not make loud noises, and the mass of the warhead is often sufficient enough to damage heavy machinery.

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Since the war began, the Russians have used some 850 Lancets. Not all of them hit their targets, but the Ukrainian military considers these drones one of the biggest causes for concern on the front line.

Back in July, Kyiv's military commanders stated that Russia had only 50 Lancets left, but the truth is that these drones are by no means running out. Dozens of kamikaze UAVs are still flying, because the Russians are still managing to produce them. And they are not doing it alone.

"Lancets" are packed with complex electronics, which are not produced in the Russian Federation. There are components that are produced in the West, which still get to Russian military factories without any problems. The flows are so large-scale that Russia can not only maintain the old rates of production of these drones, but also increase them.

While it may seem that technological sanctions are having an impact, there are still many obvious gaps in them.

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Why China's Faltering Economy Is Such Bad News For The Global South

China's economy is struggling, partly driven by a deepening economic rift with the U.S. That does not bode well for the rest of the world, particularly countries in the Global South, writes Argentine daily Clarín.

-Analysis-

BUENOS AIRES — Mired in a persistent crisis of growth, the world may be moving toward two unnerving scenarios. One is that the West, and especially the United States, may have resigned itself to China absorbing Russia into its orbit on the back of the Ukraine war. A less dramatic version would be the consolidation of an Eastern front, characterized nonetheless by a strategic divide between those two powers.

The other, more disturbing possibility is of two fronts already decided on the need to eliminate, rather than interact with, the competition.

This could explain the United States' constant ratcheting up of protectionist measures against China, no matter what these measures are called by the White House. The Biden administration recently moved to curb Chinese access to sophisticated chips (with an order restricting U.S. investments in China in that sector), even as banking institutions like Goldman Sachs are advising businesses to disinvest in China — and fast. The pretext given for such moves is national security, as Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen observed on a recent visit to Beijing.

Yellen insists the United States is not trying to obstruct China's commercial development, but block those developments that could harm U.S. national security. Whatever the labels, the United States does want to dampen communist China's technological development, seeing as its ambition is nothing less than global primacy by the middle of the century or before.

The U.S. is presently targeting all high-tech products and components that may have military applications or give China a cutting edge, and pressuring allies in Europe and Asia to adopt a similar approach, even if the EU is reluctant to follow suit.

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Heihe Postcard: Where The China-Russia "Friendship Of Convenience" Reveals Its Limits

Facing Russia, just across the Amur River, the Chinese border city of Heihe has complicated ties with its neighbor, revealing the scars of history and a shifting power dynamic between Moscow and Beijing.

HEIHE — Perched in the cab of his truck, Sacha is about to enter the customs clearance area, his lorry loaded with car parts and equipment made in China. "I make the trip two or three times a week," explains the Russian driver, his eyes as blue as the winter sky over the Amur River which marks the border between China and Russia.

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A road bridge spanning the river links the Chinese city of Heihe to Blagovechtchensk, on the eastern edge of Russia. The goods in Sacha's truck will be on Russian soil in just another kilometer's worth of road.

The two-lane bridge was inaugurated with great fanfare last June, with fireworks going off as the first trucks passed. Authorities in both countries presented it as a symbol of their rapprochement, and an example of the "unlimited friendship" sealed between the two in February, shortly before Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his army into Ukraine.

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How Much Does Xi Jinping Care About Putin's ICC Arrest Warrant?

After the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives in Moscow for a three-day visit. How far will he be willing to go to support Putin, a fugitive from international justice?

-Analysis-

PARIS — Since Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin said last year that the friendship between their nations was "boundless," the world has wondered where the limits really lie. The Chinese president's three-day visit to Russia, which began Monday, gives us an opportunity to assess.

Xi's visit is important in many ways, particularly because the International Criminal Court has just issued an arrest warrant against Putin for his role in forcibly sending thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia. For Putin, there could be no better response to this international court, which he does not recognize, than to appear alongside the president of a great country, which, like Russia, is also a permanent member of the UN Security Council. How isolated can Putin really be, when the leader of 1.5 billion people in China comes to visit?

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Geopolitics
Carlos Pérez Llana

China-Russia Alliance, How The West Failed To See It Coming

A resurgent, ambitious Russia has taken the West by surprise, just when the United States was pivoting and bracing itself to face down China.

-Analysis-

BUENOS AIRES — After the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the biggest disruption of the Cold War was when communist China's ruler, Mao Zedong, received U.S. President Richard Nixon in Beijing. The diplomatic event was a bold, calculated gamble by the Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to divide the communist block, and paved the way for the Soviet Union's geopolitical depreciation. It also helped the United States mitigate its recent defeat in and withdrawal from Vietnam.

Has another, similar geo-strategic disruption just happened? Everything suggests there is an objective alliance between Russian President Vladimir Putin and China's leader, Xi Jinping. And this may push the United States into a trap to which it has itself helped set, with a string of mistakes that began all the way back with the Clinton administration in the 1990s.

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