In the hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in China on Tuesday, he beamed out a video message proclaiming “an unprecedented level” of relations between Moscow and Beijing and cooperation on an “equal basis.”
But as Putin visits — days after President Donald Trump’s summit with Xi Jinping — there is growing imbalance between Russia and China, which are longtime allies against the United States, but also uneasy neighbors.
China’s economic and political might on the world stage continues to grow, while Putin appears to be in one of the weakest positions since he ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Western officials and analysts said.
The Russian economy is faltering, and punitive sanctions are increasing Moscow’s dependency on Beijing. Meanwhile, there is distrust beneath the surface, with at least one possible espionage case simmering in Russia.
Beijing is now a futuristic capital, showcasing China’s ambitions in AI, robotics and renewable energy. Meanwhile, Moscow and its surrounding region came under a fierce Ukrainian drone attack this weekend, and the annual Victory Day celebrations were scaled back because of security fears.
At a trade exhibition heralding Russian-Chinese economic ties in Harbin, a city in northeast China that was once under Russian rule, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Trutnev could not disguise his dismay at the gap in the two countries’ capabilities.
“When I saw that we only had honey and crabs, while our friends had drones and robots, I must admit I was a bit upset,” Trutnev, who is also Putin’s special envoy to Russia’s Far East, told reporters at the event.
The bilateral relationship that Russia touted four years ago as a “no limits friendship” — a partnership that would challenge U.S. hegemony and shape a new, multipolar world order — increasingly shows Moscow on the back foot.
The back-to-back visits by Trump and Putin, leaders who control the world’s largest nuclear arsenals, served only to highlight that Xi is now the power player to be reckoned with and courted and that Putin is the junior partner in Russia-China relations.
Russia is heavily dependent on Chinese purchases of Russian energy and supplies of Chinese components to sustain its war against Ukraine.
“China is the only country that can ignore sanctions [against Russia] because they have their own leverage over the U.S. through rare earth supplies and magnets,” said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Eurasia Russia Center. “Xi is in a very powerful position in the relationship and overall.”
“When we are talking about Russia, [China’s] leverage has grown,” Gabuev added. “It has so many more options apart from Russia, and this is exacerbated by the war.”
The last few weeks have been particularly difficult for Putin as polls published by Russia’s main state pollster, VCIOM, showed his approval ratings dropping to their lowest level since the invasion of Ukraine, with the public voicing increasing fatigue over the war, which is in its fifth year.
Russian military advances have slowed to a halt, and in some cases Moscow’s forces have lost ground, while casualties continue to mount. Russian citizens are also increasingly frustrated about the economy and new restrictions on internet access.
The drone strikes this weekend killed at least three people in the Moscow region and hit the entrance to a key oil refinery, as well as causing damage in one of the main airports.
Even as sanctions have forced Russia to turn to China for vital weaponry components, Beijing also has become the main source of supplies for Ukraine’s drone industry, helping drive a huge ramp-up in production over the past year, analysts and a Ukrainian official said.
“De facto China is the main supplier of components for Russia and for Ukraine for many Ukrainian systems,” said a Russian academic close to senior Russian diplomats, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive geopolitics.
“This topic is also important for the Russian side, and probably Putin wants them to sell more to Russia and less to Ukraine,” the academic said. “But it’s not clear whether this aim can be reached since China will say it is private business.”
Gabuev put it more bluntly. “I don’t think Putin is in a position to tell Xi what to do,” Gabuev said, adding that “Xi has all the cards.” Beijing’s assistance to Kyiv, he noted, provides an answer when European nations complain about China’s support for Russia.
Russia has also relied on China for increased purchases of Russian energy, particularly since the beginning of the year amid Western efforts to further crack down on the Russian oil sector.
Russian oil supplies to China surged 31 percent in the first quarter of 2026, according to Chinese customs data, and Russia is already one of China’s biggest suppliers of gas.
The Kremlin is hoping Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital choke point for global oil and gas shipments, in response to the U.S.-Israeli war against it will persuade China to finally approve a long-standing Russian proposal to build a Power of Siberia 2 pipeline carrying 50 billion cubic meters of gas into China annually — as part of efforts to replace the huge market for gas that Russia lost in Europe because of sanctions over the Ukraine war.
Five efforts by Moscow in four years have failed to yield an agreement as Beijing sought to maintain a high degree of diversification of gas supplies. But analysts said the crisis in global energy markets might finally persuade China to go forward with the project, though Beijing was also likely to demand that Russia reduce gas prices.
Some members of the Russian elite said they are concerned about Russia’s growing dependency.
“China is not a friend or an ally — it is Putin’s senior partner,” said Ilya Remeslo, a former Kremlin lawyer who recently emerged as a vocal opponent of the Putin regime.
“China is selling drones and components to Ukraine as well as Russia, and is extracting benefits from the war,” Remeslo said, while forcing Russia to accept gas prices much lower than what it received from Europe. He added: “Putin has no room for maneuver. … China is keeping Russia as a secondary partner. This dependency will become ever greater as long as the war continues.”
Others have expressed frustration at Russia’s glaring technological backwardness, exacerbated by sanctions and the war, compared with China.
Meanwhile, many members of Russia’s Federal Security Service, or FSB, remain highly distrustful of China, which shares a more than 2,600-mile-long border with Russia, Western officials and analysts said.
There have been dozens of cases of Russians charged with espionage for China every year, but Russia has avoided making them public so as not to ruffle relations with Beijing, apart from a brief period around 2020 to 2022 during which several cases were revealed, Gabuev said.
In 2020, the head of Russia’s Arctic Academy of Sciences, Valery Mitko, was charged with state treason on behalf of China. Russian state news agencies quoted an “informed source” as saying Mitko was alleged to have handed over classified materials in the field of hydro-acoustics and ways of detecting submarines.
In 2022, Dmitry Kolker, the head of the quantum optical technology laboratory at the Novosibirsk State University in Siberia, was charged with state treason. Kolker’s son told reporters that his father had been charged with handing state secrets to China and denied he had done so.
Western officials speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters suggested that at least one other such case was ongoing amid widespread distrust of China in the Russian security services, which see the rising power next door as a long-term threat.
For now, worry about reliance on China has been pushed into the background by Putin as he emphasizes his partnership with Xi.
China, for its part, has expressed concern over the recent spread of a virulent strain of foot-and-mouth disease from Russia into bordering areas in China. China has not publicly blamed Russia, but China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs has confirmed outbreaks in the northwestern Xinjiang region and in Gansu province.
Some Russians are hoping that Xi may persuade Putin to end the war in Ukraine.
“Openness is needed and conflicts need to be ended both in Ukraine and in the Middle East … for the stability of world trade, which for China is more important than the strengthening of influence in Russia, which is strong in any case,” a Russian official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.
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