Moscow-Beijing Agreement. Why Is It Bad for Us?

The scenario, which Washington strived to avoid, happened. China and Russia have begun active rapprochement. There is bad news for those claiming that China will now swallow Russia up. This is not expected yet.

The great agreement between Russia and China is in many ways unprecedented, at least in its form. Beijing and Moscow, de facto, announced a new Eurasian bloc, with their own rules of the game and visions of democracy. And now the definition of democracy is the following: the people themselves determine what democracy is for them. That is, there is Russian democracy and the democracy of an Idi Amin. The main thing is that the elections are formally held.

Of course, the world will not change tomorrow. This agreement is the beginning of the division of the world. And this path is very long.

Before moving on to where we are in this scheme, I would like to pay special attention to the Russia–China gas agreement and the construction of the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline. By 2025, Russia will increase its capacities of gas transmission to China to almost 100 billion cubic metres (by the way, there is still a big question of whether the Russians themselves will have enough gas for all projects).

But in any case, by controlling the logistics of gas supplies to the EU from Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and partly from Turkmenistan, Russia takes over Europe’s energy security and gets the opportunity to diversify gas supplies thanks to the Chinese. Russia makes every effort to become a global player whose energy much of Eurasia cannot do without. For now, this suits China, which will ensure that the situation in Central Asia could be a problem for the West and not threaten China itself. Therefore, we will obviously see the first real steps to implement this agreement in Central Asia.

But the project itself, no matter how skeptical one may be of it, is aimed at the whole world, so we will observe some steps in Africa and Latin America after or in parallel with Central Asia.

Although the key for both sides is a new redistribution of the world: the war with Taiwan and Ukraine. And this is really a huge threat to us.

Unfortunately, we are outside these processes. And worst of all, we still live in the paradigm of the 1990s, when there is one global player – the United States.

In addition, we quarrelled with China, and we have a rather difficult relationship with the United States. That is, we are at the crossroads of both civilisations that are entering the global struggle to change the model of the world.

But even this is not our main problem. The problem is that we don’t even make diagnoses or try to play our game.

We made a splash when we launched the Crimea Platform and now we give it up, playing the game “Implementation of the Minsk Agreements.” We got stuck in these Minsk Agreements, not wanting to even start talking about something else and raise the stakes. We build up territorial defence at a snail’s pace, we think about elections, not war.

The world is changing every day, and we continue to live as if in the 1990s. And, unfortunately, this is not just a problem of the government. This is a problem of the opposition as well.

Vadym Denysenko, Executive Director of the Ukrainian Institute for the Future (UIF)