The Duran Podcast - China-Russia Alliance Locked In, Will Gloves Come Off?

Episode Date: May 24, 2026

China-Russia Alliance Locked In, Will Gloves Come Off?

All right, Alexander, let's discuss the results from the summit between Russia and China. Putin and Xi and 40 documents, 40 plus documents signed between the two countries, covering security, economic, cultural programs, just about everything, energy. Of course, energy. I think that's a big one. Power of Siberia, too. Gas that was meant for Europe is now locked into China. This is a massive development. A lot of the lock-in, the energy lock-in between Russia and China, also has to do with what is happening in Iran as well

and trying to cut off China's energy supplies from the Middle East. So China was being pushed more to lock in this power of Siberia too. And I wouldn't doubt it. I would be surprised if we have a power. Siberia 3 sometime in the future as well. So a lot of stuff happening at this summit, a fairly quick summit as well, about a day and a half, really. And that was it. The agreement signed. And Putin returned to Russia, very different from the Trump meeting with Xi, where we really didn't get anything signed. Nothing was really agreed on during that summit.

It was a completely different visit from the Trump visit. And it was interesting to compare it also with previous visits by Putin to China in the sense that what you got, I got the sense from this one that these meetings between C and Putin and these visits by Putin to China and by the way by Xi Jinping to Russia are now becoming. almost a routine. It's like business as usual. They no longer have, you know, they're no longer quite as dramatic and as, you know, as much theatre as you used to see, because there doesn't, there doesn't need to be that anymore. So Putin came with a very strong delegation, lots of senior government officials. One of the most interesting, who was there, was Nabilina. the chair of the central bank. And I suspect that she played an important role behind the scenes. And it's pushing, working further towards integration of financial systems. Because this is now

the big story within Briggs. I mean, China has its financial system, which is very, very unique to China's, by the way, and very different from that, if, say, Russia's or was, I have personally personal knowledge of this, because I'm, you know, a slightly acquainted with a Russian banker who's worked in China, and he's told me about, and this is about 10 years ago, he told me how different their financial system was from the Russian. But anyway, so they have to find ways to sort that out and to integrate things together and to get the payment systems worked out and agreed, massive amounts of industry cooperation, and basically a resumption of the various civil aviation projects that they were working on before 2014, and I'll come to that in a moment,

and of course, energy cooperation. Now, the thing to say about energy cooperation and power of Siberia 2, is that I think that what has changed over the last few weeks and what happened just shortly before this visit, and which, again, many people didn't notice and didn't fully understand the implications of, was that China renounced or rather made a decree, which said that from now on, China is not going to be bothered by American sanctions in terms of where it buys its oil. So that Chinese refiners that buy Russian oil or Chinese companies that work in Russian gas, if they are sanctioned by the U.S. United States, China will, the Chinese government will act to protect them and will take countermeasures.

Now, this is, I'm sure this was done partly in order to set the scene for this visit by Putin. People have linked this to Iran, but I think Russia is even more important, actually, in relation to this decision. And this opens the way to complete the whole question of energy linkages between China and Russia because the Russians have been exporting a lot of oil to China, but some Chinese refiners have been careful about buying Russian oil because they don't want to buy Russian sanctions. We don't want to be affected by American sanctions. sanctions. Gas has also been something of a problem because some people in China have been

reluctant to engage in trade with the Russian gas industries because they've been nervous about American sanctions. Now they've been told by the Chinese government, stop thinking and worrying about that. We have you covered. And I think this is going to start to accelerate. And on power of Siberia, too, I think that what then happened was that over the course of this visit, the industry people went to China with Putin. Peskov is saying that pretty much everything now is agreed. There are still a few details left. And he expects a signing ceremony for the final contract very soon. I'm going to make a guess that probably the thing that's holding things back a little at the present time is the uncertainties about the price of energy over the next few months. So they probably worked out the pricing formula, but they might need to tweak it because energy costs are going to go higher or perhaps lower over the next few months. So they probably need to work that out.

But we could very well see a signing ceremony fairly soon. And power of Siberia, I understand the work has already begun. And for that moment on, China and Russia are integrated increasingly into a single energy system because it's not just fossil fuels, oil and gas that's going to be flowing from Russia to China. is building nuclear power plants in China. China's got a massive nuclear industry. Those are going to be integrated further together. And there's been further announcements that Russia and China will work more closely together on AI. And very interestingly, China and Russia are going to work

together closely on rare earths because Russia is known to have enormous deposits of large numbers of rare earths, and that's going to be pushed forward as well. And I can remember again, not so long ago before 2014, that Germany in particular had plans at that time to work with Russia to develop rare earth's technologies and industries in order to break the Chinese monopoly, or that's all gone. Yeah, well, Germany's gone. Europe is cooked. Yeah.

Yeah, all that energy is going to go to Europe. Yes. Now it's going to China. You know, Trump went to China and he brought the business team, and we got no business. Putin went to China and we got all kinds of business and all kinds of deal side. Isn't that weird? But, yeah. Well, it's because, you see, there is a continuous dialogue.

with the Americans that isn't like that at the moment. What the Americans have is that they have these very confrontational adversarial meetings. The business people, of course, still try to do their work with each other. I mean, Tim Cook and Elon Musk already have big investments in China. I mean, there's a big Tesla factory in Shanghai. Apple still makes its computers in China. But what there isn't anymore is a kind of overarching framework between the US and China on moving forward in industry and commercial and trade cooperation. Because we've had trade wars, we've had battles over rare earths and those kind of things.

Whereas the Russians do have that framework. They have this constant dialogue with the Chinese. So these deals that were signed. over the course of Putin's visit. They weren't negotiated during Putin's visit. They've been under discussion for a long, long time. And some of them have been dusted off. I mean, the other big thing that's happening is aviation collaboration.

Now, before 2014, China and Russia were working together on commercial civil aircraft, wide-bodied aircraft. And there was also a heavy, the building a heavy helicopter. The Chinese were going to do the avionics and were going to build the airframes. The Russians were going to provide the engines. The Russians are very advanced, more advanced, or were more advanced than the Chinese on big aircraft engine technology, which is very, very tricky. Then there was the 2014 crisis. Then there was the 2022 crisis. We had the US and Europe imposing heavy sanctions on Russia.

The Chinese said, well, maybe this isn't such a good idea, because if we build aircraft using Russian engines, then we won't find bias for them in the West. But now all of that is coming back again because the Chinese probably are saying to themselves, going to be able to sell our aircraft in the West anyway. The Americans are not even buying our EVs. So let's worry. Let's focus instead on our domestic markets. Let's focus on Asian markets where these problems aren't going to exist to the same extent or perhaps any more. So let's go

back and let's work again with the Russians on these aviation developments. And this is big news because notice that Trump went to China talking about China buying 200 Boeing's and China didn't buy 200 Boeing's. The Chinese said that they would look into the idea of buying more Boeing's, but they haven't committed themselves to anything beyond that. What they're doing instead, As I said, is they're forging ahead with their own civil aircraft developments, which are, by the way, very advanced now. And the Russians are joining. What does Putin do now is that he returns to Russia? What happens next in all of this?

What does she do? How does this move forward? Because they announced the multipolar world. Yes. That was the big announcement, right? A big announcement. A hugely elaborated. Press conference.

conference, hugely elaborated joint statement, building on an awful lot of what they've said previously. Interesting statement, in some respects, and more in some ways about Russia now than China, because it says that both China and Russia are civilizational countries, but Russia, in other words, is a civilizational state. Now, that would not have been something the Russians would have agreed to 10 years ago. 10, 15 years ago, Russia was a European country. Now it's a civilizational state.

So it is distinct from Europe. And the rest of the statement basically repeats many of the same themes, as we've seen before, about multipolar world, about democracy in terms of interstate relations, but it goes further. And it says that the world is made up of many civilizations. Each civilization is valid and must be taken at its own value. It is a mistake to place one civilization above another. And it's also wrong to talk about first-tier countries and second-tier countries or things of that kind. So no more a first world, second world, third world, all that kind of thing. Every state in every place now has equal value. Now that's something like what the Chinese have been saying for a long, long time. You could even argue going back to the

1960s in some respects. But for the Russians, this is a break because it implies that Russia is no longer conceives of itself as part of Europe anymore. It's no longer a member of the European family. It's a civilizational state in its own rights, and it demands to be treated as an equal by all of the European states, not just as, you know, the country cousin, which the European states have done up to now. So a distancing, in fact, a rupture from Europe.

And what does Putin do when he gets back to Moscow? He deals with the war. He deals with the drone attacks. When I said the war, I mean the war in Ukraine, he deals with the drone attacks. I think he's going to have another call with Trump fairly soon to discuss the drone attacks on Russia and that kind of thing. But the Europeans, as we've recently talked about, are looking to negotiate with the Russians again, or at least they're trying to. They can't agree on a chief negotiator. They can't agree on a negotiating strategy.

Some people in Germany are again talking about resuming energy contacts. It seems to me that that train has left the station. Russians are not going to be interested. Well, do you think there are some European leaders, some European states that are hoping for a Russian retaliation to the drones? Oh, yes. Zelensky as well, because that's the one thing that could probably, and I don't think it will, but in their minds could probably save the Ukraine, the Ukraine military, as if they get some

sort of NATO involvement with the United States. And so they're banking on perhaps some sort of misguided or miscalculated Russian retaliation or Russian strike, which would trigger some sort of Article 5 or something along those lines. I mean, do you get a sense that that's what a lot of this appears to be about? Well, it is exactly what it is about. I mean, there's a Swedish official, but he's a minister. Prime Minister.

Prime Minister, who says, you know, that NATO should take charge of the drone campaign against Russia, which is, in effect, saying that NATO should be directly involved in the war, not just, you know, providing assistance. His direct quote was to help direct. Yeah, to help direct. Well, there you go. I mean, help direct. Exactly.

Exactly. So, and Lithuania, there's been talk now that the Lithuanians are going the way of the Lappians. Anyway, they're clearly trying to provoke a conflict with the Russians. And they're obviously trying to do it in order to bring the Americans back in. Because this is what this is always in the end about. That's why I personally think that what's going to happen is that Trump and Putin are going to speak. And Putin is going to call Trump and he's going to say, do you really want to be in this situation where you're drank back in? If you want to go there, then be aware that we have this ability to retaliate.

Now, directly against you. You're already tied up in the Persian Gulf. Your weapons are depleted. Which is not going to say these things, but all of that's going to be in the background. And my guess, actually, is that the Americans do not want to be entangled in this. And they will, if they get that call from Putin, which I expect. they will decide to tell the Europeans to back off this. Of course, always the problem with the Americans,

that they're not fully united around these matters. But we can talk all about that in another program because it is an issue. But anyway, this is what I think Putin wants to, has to focus on now. He's still got the unresolved situation of the conflict in Ukraine. There's also been a whole series of, statements and commentaries in Russia, from Medvedev, but from others to like Sergei Paletayev, who is a commentator, about Ukraine becoming a failed state, likely to collapse very soon,

the prospect of insurgences and continued actions against the Russians from this territory or from various extremist groups that continue to function. terrorism is being used. So, you know, he has to think about all of that, but he comes to this, knowing that, you know, his relationship with Z and with China is fully secured, and he does this now in a position where, yes, he will talk to the Europeans, but he no longer expects or even wants anything much from them. Remember, we discussed it, I think a week ago, this press conference that Putin gave after Victory Day. And how bitter and angry about the Europeans he was, the extent to which he feels that they betrayed Russia and him personally, the way he was tricked by Macron, the way, you know, over the

withdrawal of the Russian troops from Kiev, the whole business of the Minsk agreement. Putin is not in a mood at the present time to conduct any dealings with the Europeans. And now that he's got this strong relationship with China, which is developing fast, he doesn't need to. All right. We will end the video there. The durand.com. We're on X-Rond Rumble, we are on Telegram.

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