[Epoch Times, December 23, 2021]Russia is creating a military crisis in Ukraine, with the purpose of coercing EU member states to abandon their national defense sovereignty, so as to obey Russia in order to re-establish the outer defense zone of the Soviet era. The European Union can’t do anything about it, mainly because Germany has put on Russia’s energy “noose.” Xi Jinping took the opportunity to propose to Putin the strategy of “back-to-back” cover between China and Russia, but Russia’s defense against China was deep-rooted, and the CCP’s infiltration in Russia continued to be attacked. China and Russia were unable to establish mutual trust in military strategy. .
1. Will Russia detonate the Ukrainian powder keg?
The current Ukraine is like a gunpowder keg that may explode at any time. A hundred thousand Russian army is assembled within the Russian border in the actual control area of Russia and Ukraine. This time, the military tension between the two countries is no longer about Russia inciting pro-Russian forces in Ukraine to defect from Ukraine, but about threatening Ukraine by military force to put pressure on the EU and NATO. Putin warned on December 21 that Russia was prepared to adopt “military-technical measures” in response to the “unfriendly” behavior of the West in support of Ukraine. Will the third world war break out in Eastern Europe? The Chinese, who have always been mainly concerned about the situation in East Asia, may not understand the true meaning of the current Ukrainian gunpowder keg.
There are two modes for great powers to provoke international confrontation. One is to impose diplomatic pressure by military threats, which is characterized by a clear diplomatic goal. This is the case for the Ukrainian crisis; the other is to use military threats as effective force. Sexual testing is an attempt to force the other party to make concessions. In fact, the threatening party does not have what it wants to achieve diplomatically. It only wants to conquer the other party militarily. The crisis in the Taiwan Strait is a typical example.
What is Russia’s clear diplomatic goal regarding the current Ukrainian crisis? On December 17, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs proposed a draft treaty requiring NATO and the United States to protect Russia’s national security as a prerequisite for resolving the Ukrainian crisis, and the EU and NATO are limited to make a decision within one month. The draft mainly includes the following clauses: 1. NATO ceases support and military cooperation with the countries of the former Soviet Union, and prohibits Ukraine and other republics of the former Soviet Union from joining NATO; confirms that Russia and NATO will not treat each other as rivals and resolve all disputes peacefully. And avoid the use of force; the United States withdraws existing nuclear weapons outside its territory.
This document shows that Russia is using heavy forces to intimidate the European Union and NATO and issue warnings of threats of force, hoping to force the European Union and NATO to make major concessions in Europe and allow the European Union to withdraw. The garrisons deployed by the three Baltic countries and Poland restored the Soviet defense periphery during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and brought Eastern European countries back into its sphere of influence. Putin clearly put forward the strategic goal of diplomatic negotiations under the gun, which is to have the EU and the United States sign this agreement.
Second, the EU leader Germany bound its hands and feet
The Ukrainian crisis has become a major threat to European security. Russia’s threats directly threaten the national sovereignty and national security of Ukraine, the three Baltic states, and Poland. Since the draft treaty proposed by Russia focuses on military issues, NATO is the first to bear the brunt, and the EU countries behind NATO are the protagonists who must participate in this diplomatic negotiation. However, the European Union has so far kept silent on Putin’s draft diplomatic treaty; NATO has also had to ignore this major issue concerning European defense and the security of EU member states. The root of this strange position lies in Germany.
Germany plays a leading role in the EU, but this EU leader country is now dragging the EU and even Europe into a quagmire because of the failure of its own government. The so-called failure of the German policy mainly refers to the two policies implemented by the Merkel administration: First, in order to promote the green energy policy of the left, Germany has continuously increased the proportion of natural gas in its energy supply; second, in order to use natural gas, Germany has ignored the United States. Stubbornly insisted on importing large amounts of natural gas from Russia. Starting in 2017, Germany’s natural gas imports from Russia accounted for 40% of Germany’s total natural gas consumption, resulting in Germany’s dependence on Russia for energy supply.
After Germany put Russia’s energy “noose” around its neck, Russia is now tightening the noose and forcing EU countries to make full concessions on national defense and security. As a result, Germany has fallen into a triple dilemma of politics, economy, and national defense. After Russia proposed the above-mentioned draft agreement, it immediately began to reduce the amount of natural gas delivered to Germany on December 21, so Germany’s originally extremely expensive electricity price immediately jumped by 25%. Ironically, due to the indispensable demand for energy in the cold winter, Western European countries have to restart the generator sets of oil-fired power plants in order to maintain the normal supply of electricity, so the green energy policy is self-defeating.
When Germany was tightened by Russia’s energy “noose”, and because of its long-term insistence on reducing defense costs, its military strength was weak, and it was unable to respond to Russian military threats militarily. This resulted in Germany’s economic, military and diplomatic aspects. All have no response to Russian extortion. President Trump warned Germany that relying on Russian natural gas would have serious economic, military, and political consequences, and they have now fulfilled them one by one; and the German government was still snarling a year ago, “If we understand sovereignty only means the future If we only do what Washington wants, we don’t have to talk about European sovereignty.”
Now, the sovereignty and national security of the EU member states are finally facing the dilemma of being sold out by Germany because of Germany being blackmailed by Russia. The author of the German government still refuses to admit that it is now passive because of its own national policy mistakes. Therefore, the EU and NATO are also speechless because of Germany’s dilemma. They can only let the Ukrainian crisis drag on and may worsen at any time.
3. Will Russia and China form a military “back-to-back” strategy?
When potential military conflicts in Europe may break out, Xi Jinping proposed to Putin the strategy of “back-to-back” cover between China and Russia. Putin and Xi Jinping held a video conference on December 15. According to the Russian “Business Daily”, the two sides are willing to establish a reliable rear for each other without establishing a military alliance; according to the definition of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they act “back-to-back”, and both sides regard each other as a pillar for coping with external challenges. . Alexander Lomanov, an important think tank in Russia and the deputy director of the Institute of World Economics and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IMEMO in Russian), said that each party “realizes that it is resisting its opponents. Russia is in the West. China is in the Indo-Pacific region. It is extremely important for Russia and China to cover each other’s rear back to back.” According to Russian media reports, Xi Jinping said to Putin: “You are firmly opposed to the attempt to strike a wedge between our two countries, and I highly appreciate this.”
Will Sino-Russian relations become closer and closer, so that an authoritarian alliance of major powers appears in the world to confront the alliance of democratic countries? To understand this issue, we need to know more about it. Is there any strategic mutual trust behind the mutual use of both parties? If there is no real strategic mutual trust between each other, then the “back-to-back” between the two parties is to a greater extent a temporary political cooperation and cannot constitute a military “back-to-back” strategy.
The above report mentioned that there is a prerequisite for the two sides to act “back-to-back”, that is, not to establish a military alliance. On October 22 last year, at the annual meeting of the Valdai International Debate Club, a well-known Russian think tank, Putin discussed the international situation via video. When asked whether Russia and China would form a military alliance, Putin’s answer was: We don’t need (to establish a military alliance), but it is theoretically conceivable… The same question was held in Putin’s annual meeting at the end of 2019. It also appeared at large-scale press conferences. Putin’s answer at the time was: “We currently have no military alliance with China, and we do not intend to establish it.” Putin apparently denied the arrangement of the Russian-Chinese military alliance twice, but last year he used ” In theory, hypothetical language such as “imagination” deliberately creates a kind of strategic ambiguity in order to confuse the West.
Why is Putin actually lacking in interest in establishing a Sino-Russian military alliance? You can listen to the opinions expressed by Russian elites at home. A well-known Russian media person, Pozner, said in an interview show on Moscow’s Echo Radio on March 25 this year that China is Russia’s main threat, and Russia’s only response is Russia. American alliance. This view reflects the true thinking of many people in the Russian elite. Pozner has been a household name in Russia since the Soviet era. He started as a current affairs commentator for the Soviet media in the 1960s, mainly hosting English programs for Soviet foreign propaganda. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, he continued to be active in the media industry, serving as the dean of the Russian Television Academy, and currently hosting talk shows on the largest Russian state-run TV channel 1.
His view is: China (the Communist Party) is pursuing global hegemony and wants to become the world‘s leader. He does not trust China (the Communist Party) and is very worried about the CCP’s threat. He believes that for Russia, the only way to fight the CCP is to form an alliance with the United States, because only the United States can become Russia’s only ally in this regard. Pozner emphasized that when the Putin administration pushed to get closer to the CCP, it seemed that they did not realize the severity of the threat from China (the Communist Party), did not have a sense of crisis, and perhaps the CCP threat had not yet approached. He believes that only when the CCP threat is imminent, the Kremlin leadership will realize the urgency of the CCP threat, but it may be too late.
4. Why are the Russian elites guarding against the CCP?
The Siberian region in Russian history was once an active place for Asian nomads, where Mongols, Turks, Tatars, Huns, and Xianbei all lived there. So far, the Russian name for China and Chinese people (Китай) is still the ethnic name of the Khitan people. Historically, Russians believed that all people who passed from Asia were Khitan people; while the place name of Siberia (Сибирь) came from the ethnic name of the ethnic group Xianbei. It is possible that the ancient Xianbei people lived there for the first time. During the Tsarist era, Russia expanded its territory vigorously to the Pacific Ocean; today, Russia’s national emblem is still a double-headed eagle, one head looking west and the other looking east. In the minds of the Russians, the eastern half of the country cannot be given up in any way.
Only by understanding the situation in the eastern half of Russia, namely Siberia and the Far East, can we understand the Russian elite’s concern about China. At the end of 1988, I took a train from Beijing across Siberia to Moscow, and then from Moscow to Bonn, the capital of West Germany. At that time, I noticed that the population of Siberia is mainly concentrated along the only railway line. On average, a small and medium-sized city appears every 4 hours of train journey; and the city is dilapidated, the factories are aging, the residents are poor, and there are only a few villages outside the city. Part of the land is barren. This situation has not improved since then, on the contrary it has continued to deteriorate. Siberia and the Russian Far East are now experiencing a large population loss, with only one person per square kilometer in the Far East. Russia and Northeast China have a border of more than 4,300 kilometers. There are tens of millions of people on this side of China. Therefore, working and doing business in Russia has become a choice for Chinese people.
Russia is divided into two parts: the Ural Mountains and Yekaterinburg (formerly Sverdlovsk), which is also the boundary between Europe and Asia. To the east of this dividing line, half of Russia’s territory is now completely hollowed out, and the population has moved west on a large scale. Many cities, towns, factories and residential areas have been empty, and a large number of Chinese people in the Russian Far East have existed for decades. Up. Local residents in Siberia and the Far East welcome Chinese immigrants and want to rely on Chinese immigrants to work for them, create wealth, and feed Russia’s eastern region.
In this way, Russia’s central policy and local policies have a fundamental conflict, and this situation will not change for a long time; and the elites in Moscow are very worried that this situation means that Russia’s homeland security will face long-term population threats from China. Under such a background, Russia cannot have real strategic cooperation with the CCP; in other words, Russia’s permanent sense of insecurity in the eastern half of the country determines that China and Russia will not completely join forces and can only use each other.
On August 6 this year, Putin’s right-hand man and current Minister of Defense Shoigu, when meeting with scholars of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, proposed that the capital should be moved from Moscow to Siberia, where five central cities should be built, each with a population of no less than 300,000. , The total population exceeds one million. As a senior bureaucrat of the Kremlin, Shoigu has advised President Vladimir Putin several times on the strategy of moving the capital since 2012, with the purpose of increasing Russia’s strategic security. He didn’t say why such a suggestion was made. In fact, everyone in Russia understands the lines behind it, that is, they are worried that the eastern half of Russia will be eaten away by China.
5. The CCP’s espionage activities against Russia have been hit repeatedly
The CCP is in Russia, just like in other countries, it screams for friendship and lays knives behind its back. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has always had a Communist Party. In the last decade of the last century, every national election was able to get 20% to 25% of the vote. Now this power is declining. In September of this year, Putin suddenly ordered the security department to launch a continuous arrest of the Communist Party of Russia, and seal the building of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party and the Moscow City Committee building of the Russian Communist Party for 3 days. According to news from Moscow, Putin learned that the CCP had been secretly supporting the Russian Communists to overthrow him for a long time, and the situation has intensified recently, so he initiated this large-scale arrest. The Voice of America has reported that the leader of the Russian Communist Party Zyuganov and high-ranking officials of the Russian Communist Party received financial support from the CCP and were at the mercy of the CCP. The top leaders of the Russian Communist Party frequently travel and give speeches in China. Zyuganov has three books published in China, and one grandson is studying in China for an internship. One third of the family of Levchenko, the former governor of Irkutsk Oblast, close to China, is in China a year. These are all invisible bribery.
Therefore, although Putin and Xi Jinping support each other on diplomatic occasions, the distrust and hostility of Russia towards the CCP cannot be reduced. This time, Putin issued a warning to the CCP to eliminate the CCP’s political infiltration into Russia. In addition, the most active foreign spies in Russia are often bought by the CCP. Here are three spy cases this year.
Case 1: In January this year, two senior engineers and business executives of a Russian aviation and naval ship engine company were arrested. After their retirement, they provided the CCP with engine technology and also trained the CCP with talents in related fields.
In the second case, Chita, close to the border between Russia and Mongolia, announced on February 25 that a local resident, Vasiliev, was convicted of collecting intelligence for Chinese spy agencies and sentenced to 8 years in prison for treason. This place is the regional military command center for Russia to deploy and guard against the CCP’s military forces.
In the third case, the Moscow City Court announced on April 23 that the scientist Vorobiev was sentenced to 20 years in prison and a fine of 1 million rubles. The crimes committed by Vorobiev include treason, illegal export and smuggling of materials, technologies, technical information, equipment and services that can be used to manufacture weapons of mass destruction. The Moscow Aviation Institute where he works is a top school and research institution in the field of aviation and aerospace in Russia. This person is a lecturer in the rocket engine teaching and research section of the school. He is good at design and calculation of liquid fuel rocket engines, and the overall theory of aviation and rocket engines. The influential Russian Business Radio said that it can be inferred from the court’s judgment that this case involved Vorobiev’s provision of scientific and technological intelligence to China. His defense lawyers neither affirmed nor denied this. The court’s judgment mentioned that Vorobiev has very extensive and stable ties with China, and he also tried to escape from the Russian border to China. The length of the sentence and the heavy punishment in this case are very rare in the case of scientist espionage involving China announced by Russia in recent years.
These espionage cases this year not only reflect the activity of the CCP’s espionage activities in Russia, but also show that Russia is not slack in its guard and defense against the CCP, and will never be merciless when starting. Russian current affairs commentator Nikolsky said that Russia’s thinking about the CCP as a threat has never changed; moreover, the closer the relationship between the two countries, the more people can feel the potential mistrust in the relationship between the two sides. Nikolsky said: “Many observers and media reporters are no longer as optimistic about Russia-China relations as they were five years ago…Many people now know that there are too many problems under the table.”
The Epoch Times
Editor in charge: Zhu Ying
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