'Your only friend right now is Mr. Xi: Normal practice for Putin to go to China every year'

Oliver Farry is pleased to welcome Aleksei Chigadaev, Analyst on China-Russia Relations and Associate Research Fellow at the New Eurasian Strategies Centre (NEST Centre). Rather than reinforcing a narrative of a triumphant anti Western alliance, Chigadaev portrays a highly complex relationship marked by asymmetry, strategic necessity, and quiet unease. Far from depicting a partnership of equals, he argues that Russia increasingly seeks “legitimacy from the outside” through highly choreographed encounters with Xi Jinping, while China approaches Moscow with calculated pragmatism rather than ideological enthusiasm. “Your only friend right now is Mr. Xi,” crystallising the geopolitical narrowing of Russia’s options since the invasion of Ukraine.