Ian Bremmer

Russia, like North Korea, is more of a chaos actor.

So when Russia invaded Ukraine and told Xi Jinping it was going to be over very quickly, the fact that it wasn't and that it undermined China's own relations with the East European countries that they were doing the best economic relations with, but suddenly became the most anti-Russian because of the war and China's relationship with Russia undermined their own old 16 plus one relationship with all the East and Southern Europeans, that was a problem.

So the Chinese aren't happy with the fact that the North Koreans have provided over 10,000 troops to the front lines to Russia to fight.

And the Chinese found out about that when it happened.

It wasn't like Putin gave China a heads up.

So there are some of these issues.

where the Russians are acting as a chaos actor on the global stage, causing more instability, and the Chinese are very uncomfortable with that.

China provides a lot of important technology to Russia, some of that's dual use, a lot of important money to Russia, and they buy a lot of oil.

from Russia, but they don't provide direct warfighting capabilities the way the Iranians do and the North Koreans do.

And they also don't recognize Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

They don't recognize the annexation

of four Ukrainian districts that the Russians have now put into their constitution as a basis of their negotiating platform.

They don't recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.

They say that it is the territorial integrity of Ukraine that has sway, and they've said that at the United Nations General Assembly on many occasions.

Because it's consistent with their policy of Taiwan, which the Chinese see as an indelible part of the Chinese nation and the Chinese state.

So all of that is to say the Putin-China relationship is very strong.

Trump's idea that he was going to pull a reverse Nixon and get the Russians to align with him over Xi Jinping was insanity and never going to happen.

And his own advisors, most of them knew it, but were unprepared to tell Trump the truth about it because he doesn't like it when people disagree with him.

And as a consequence, that relationship is not going anywhere.

But again,