Putin went to Beijing four days after Trump, and the sequence flattered Moscow only on the surface. Trump had left without a breakthrough; Russia could present itself as China's steadier partner. But the visit produced no Power of Siberia 2 and no significant agreements, and what it confirmed was the asymmetry underneath the friendship: China is now the player whose economy lets Russia keep fighting. Beijing declines to press Putin to end the war while maintaining, in public, that it should end.
The commercial frictions are real — gas price, car imports, the terms of dependence — yet none of it touches the strategic closeness. The partnership deepens precisely as it becomes more one-sided.

I have just released R.Politik Bulletin No. 10 (184), which looks at this and at a sharper question forming at home.

Because the more telling shift this fortnight is internal. With talks paused and Washington waiting to see whether Russia's position weakens, loyalist voices — people who are no one's idea of dissenters — have begun to argue openly that the war cannot be won by military means. Putin is unlikely to move; what matters is that the argument is now sayable, and that speculation about manoeuvring around him has started to circulate.

Against that backdrop Russia staged its largest joint nuclear exercise with Belarus to date — the nuclear card pressed harder precisely as the conventional war offers less.

The domestic machine, meanwhile, is preparing for September. Two border regions, Belgorod and Bryansk, went to a combat general and a technocrat — wartime personnel policy in miniature — while United Russia has been told to campaign in a softer register even as the pressure the Kremlin cannot control keeps building.

If you follow how Russia's strategic choices and its internal politics are starting to pull against each other, the full bulletin is at https://rpolitik.com/bulletin/10-2026/putin-in-china-ukraine-a-shifting-debate-nuclear-exercises-new-governors-in-belgorod-and-bryansk-challenging-elections?utm_source=telegram&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=smm_promo_rp&utm_content=bulletin_page