Russia has “already lost geopolitically” its war in Ukraine, Macron said in an interview published on Sunday, ahead of talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Paris later that day.
“De facto, it has entered a form of subservience with regards to China and has lost its access to the Baltic, which was critical, because it prompted the decision by Sweden and Finland to join NATO,” Macron told the French newspaper L’Opinion.
Macron’s comments have drawn particularly strong attention within China, coming shortly before a delegation sent by President Xi Jinping was to arrive in Ukraine.
That Russia is becoming China’s junior partner is not a new analysis. “Vassal state” is a favorite term of Macron these days, having said in April that “Being an ally does not mean being a vassal… doesn’t mean that we don’t have the right to think for ourselves,” to describe France’s relationship with the U.S.
Yet Macron’s comments are significant. For starters, they were uttered publicly by the top leader of a major European country that influences the region’s politics and is one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.
Macron’s comments have triggered two different reactions in China.
Within the Chinese Communist Party, there is a sense of caution, believing this could be a tactic to drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow.
But Macron’s comments seem to have made many regular Chinese smile. The former Soviet Union was one of the world’s two superpowers during the Cold War days. Having the great Russia be a vassal state only reconfirms the feeling that China has become a great power on par with the U.S.
The pressing issue for China now is to break through the international coalition of Western democracies that stands against it.
In this regard, it is important to propagate the view that the anti-China coalition has not only failed to produce its wished-for outcome but has also been counterproductive — and that it is China who is truly contributing to world peace.
And when better to make this exclamation than on the very weekend that leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized nations meet in Hiroshima, Japan?
China carefully prepared the delegation to Ukraine to push back against international pressure on it. The envoys are led by Li Hui, Beijing’s special representative for Eurasian affairs. Li is a veteran diplomat with long experience in the former Soviet bloc.
The delegation is the fruit of a telephone conversation in April between Xi and Zelenskyy, which China has trumpeted with fanfare.
The plan is for the delegation to visit Ukraine, then carry on to Poland, France, Germany and Russia.
But when Li left for Ukraine, Zelenskyy was still in the U.K. for talks with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as part of a whirlwind European tour.
During their talks on Monday, Zelenskyy secured a new military aid package from Sunak that includes hundreds of air defense missiles as well as hundreds of attack drones with a range of more than 200 kilometers.
The previous day, Zelenskyy met Macron. France plans to supply dozens of domestically made armored vehicles, including AMX-10RCs, to Ukraine in the coming weeks.
Also on Sunday, Zelenskyy met with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin, where he secured an additional $3 billion worth of military aid.
The agreements hint at a full-scale counteroffensive against Russian forces Zelenskyy plans to launch.
After his meeting with Sunak, the president was asked whether Ukraine was waiting for more weaponry before starting its much-anticipated counteroffensive. “We really need some more time,” Zelenskyy said. “Not too much. We will be ready in some time.”
Against such a backdrop, the time does not seem ripe for China’s mediation efforts.
China is fully aware of how difficult its diplomatic task is. The question is, why the Xi administration had no choice but to send the envoys when it did.
Shortly before the delegation’s departure, a prominent “wolf warrior” scholar cautioned against overly high expectations.
In a coolheaded analysis of the situation, an expert familiar with China’s domestic politics and diplomacy said, “The biggest purpose [of sending the delegation to Ukraine] is to provide a topic of conversation to counter the G-7 summit in Hiroshima.”
China needed to prevent a situation in which only the G-7 summit in Hiroshima was making global headlines.
The Xi administration has orchestrated another attempt at diplomatic one-upmanship. The China-Central Asia Summit — one of the top two diplomatic events of 2023, Foreign Minister Qin Gang said in March — is taking place on Thursday and Friday in Xi’an, the capital of Shaanxi province in northwestern China. Although the meeting has yet to make headlines, it will be attended by Xi.
By inviting leaders from former Soviet republics in Central Asia while at the same time dispatching the delegation to Ukraine, Xi wants to squeeze into the G-7’s global spotlight.
News of the Chinese envoys visiting Ukraine and of the China-Central Asia Summit will be reported every day, at least within China.
Meanwhile, the fierce U.S.-China confrontation continues to move toward dangerous territory. Relevant to this, Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, and Jake Sullivan, U.S. President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, recently held marathon talks in Vienna. Their meeting had not been announced in advance.
Perhaps Beijing and Washington sought a more productive meeting than the one that took place in March of 2021, shortly after Biden was inaugurated. In front of cameras, top American and Chinese diplomats verbally sparred across a table in the U.S. state of Alaska.
The U.S.-China confrontation has since escalated to the point that the countries prioritized the Wang-Sullivan meeting as an attempt to prevent an accidental clash in another arena.
Macron’s utterances only heightened international tensions. To be sure, China is certainly increasing its influence over Russia, but Xi is careful to ensure Putin does not lose face.
China was once wary of the Soviet Union, labeling it hegemonic. Now Putin — nostalgic for the Soviet era and hoping to restore Russia’s sphere of influence — has acted hegemonically by invading Ukraine.
It seems unlikely that Putin will meekly go along with Chinese efforts to mediate the mess he has made in Ukraine. If he were to, Russia could truly become the vassal state Macron described.
Zelenskyy, meanwhile, is probably preoccupied with the launch of a full-scale counteroffensive while concurrently working out subsequent moves. As such, he also is likely pondering how he can use China, which has a certain influence over Russia.
It is implausible that Xi’s delegation will make any thunder-stealing achievements in Ukraine; one visit is not nearly enough time to make breakthroughs.
For the time being, then, it will have to be enough that China is putting out feelers.
By Katsuji Nakazawa, Tokyo-based senior staff and editorial writer at Nikkei. He spent seven years in China as a correspondent and later as China bureau chief. He was the 2014 recipient of the Vaughn-Ueda International Journalist prize.
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