Russia: With Friends Like China, Ukraine Does Not Stand a Chance..

Adebayo Adeniran
3 min readMay 17, 2024

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Brothers in arms. Image via Li Jingling on Twitter.

Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin.

These current crop are determined to be much smarter than their forebears and judging by the actions, it does seem as though they have learnt from the disastrous mistakes which Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong made.

When the People’s Republic of China came into being in 1949, there was absolute clarity with Chairman Mao, ensconced in the role of the junior partner and Stalin, the senior partner. Back then, Russia was anxious to export communism to Europe and Asia and it saw in China, a fellow traveller and bulwark against western dominance.

Proxy wars between the west and east, were fought with Korea, Vietnam and much of Africa in the eye of the storm in those days.

The lines of divergence between China and Russia, only became apparent when Stalin died and his successor took a contrary position to everything his former boss stood and worked for.

But that was a long time ago.

China went through the second half of the twentieth century in the doldrums economically, with little hope for improvement.

Hong Kong, which was a British territory at the time, was carrying out an experiment in neoliberalism, with such aplomb and…

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Adebayo Adeniran
Adebayo Adeniran

Written by Adebayo Adeniran

A lifelong bibliophile, who seeks to unleash his energy on as many subjects as possible

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