 Ukraine and the Zelensky government did have a good relationship with China. Ukraine was a major source of food security for China, and it had signed up to the Bell and Road Initiative. There were of course issues between the two countries, but which bilateral relationship in the world does not have some kind of issues. Whatever they were, Ukraine was not engaged in activities that could be described as anti-China or unfriendly to China. There was no reason why China should want to see Ukraine being invaded. On the 4th of February 2022, nearly a year ago, Putin met with Xi Jinping before the opening of the Beijing Olympics in Beijing, and they declared that the friendship between their respective countries had no limits. And that was the 4th of February 2022. After the Winter Games, about 20 days later, on the 24th of February, Russia under Putin invaded Ukraine. Since the invasion, China has followed a policy which I would describe as declaring neutrality, supporting Putin, and paying no price. China, I would say, is arguably the best-placed great powers to book a peace if Xi Jinping is so minded to do so. And if he had tried to play shuttle diplomacy and had been successful, he would have catapulted China to global leadership and would have made Xi Jinping looks like a global great statement. It didn't happen. A year on, let's review where we are with China's involvement and where it will go. But to do so, we must, of course, also take into account the perspectives of both Ukraine and Russia. Hence, we have put together this panel of experts who can share the views and perhaps debate among themselves these three perspectives. To do so, we have a wonderful group of experts. And the first I would like to introduce to you is Dr. Nihinia Hobova from Ukraine herself. She is a scientist and a fellow at the Crimean Institute of Oriental Studies at the National Academy of Sciences in Ukraine. She works on language policies and strategies, political discourse and sign of media analysis. She will be able to give us a perspective on us in Ukraine. We also have John Glittings. John is one of those pioneers who work on the Chinese military when he was not a subject of huge interest in a few of China's studies. He is also a research associate at the Sowist China Institute, a very much admired journalist with a distinguished career at The Guardian. He has published multiple important books on China and I will only mention the most recent two, which are The Changing Face of China that came out, I think, in 2005 and then more recently The Gourious Art of Peace that came out in 2012, the year when Xi Jinping became leader of China. Also joining us is Dr. Marcin Kazimarski, who is a lecturer in security studies at the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow. His research focuses on Russia-China relations, Russia's foreign policy, great power, regionalism and the road of domestic politics in foreign policy. He is the author of Russia-China relations in the post-crisis international order, which came out in 2015. I will kick off by asking the panelists questions and we encourage them to engage with each other, particularly if they disagree. I will make it very clear and we indeed request our speakers to jump in if you have anything that you would like to say that you disagree with another panelist so that we can have a more lively, open and robust conversation. I will try to leave about 30 to 40 minutes to fill the questions that members of the audience may have for the panelists. Please put them in the Q&A box and if there is somebody that you would direct your questions to, in particular, please say so. Let me get started. Since Ukraine is fighting hard for its sovereignty and its security and its bleeding, let me get started not with the view from China but from the view from Ukraine. Dr. Khobova, from the perspective of a Ukrainian psychologist, how do you see China's policy towards the war in Ukraine? Do you think China is playing a positive or a negative road in the war? Over to you. Okay, thank you, Dr. Tseng. First of all, I have to say that I'm very grateful to be invited to the discussion. Unfortunately, it is still a common place to discuss Ukraine without Ukrainians. And I'm sincerely honored to be able to represent Ukrainian voices here. Now, to the topic of the panel, I hope to paint a brief picture of the current state of Ukraine-China relations with a bit of a pre-war background. Naturally, it's quite a complex issue now. I will try to include only the most important points. In the past, relations of Ukraine and China mostly fluctuated between lukewarm and unenthusiastic and only recently with Zelensky, they were picking up a bit. There was interest in mutual trade investments, some cultural exchange, but also quite a bit of scandals, including Chinese spinach, the unsuccessful sale of motorseach, a grain deal fraud, etc. In general, those issues alone would not be that big of a deal if it were not for the major problem. Since 2014, Ukraine has become much closer with the US. Since then, Ukrainian leaders were not very keen on building strong ties with China. One of the country's strategic partners, actually, and the largest trade partner. In 2013, just before fleeing Ukraine, then President Yanukovych visited Beijing and both sides announced massive plans for cooperation, none of which came to life, naturally, with the turmoil of Russian and Russian in Ukraine. In short, Ukraine was too unstable politically for China. On the other hand, we have to acknowledge that Ukrainian politics are very much influenced by public opinion, for better or worse. But in a country with direct elections and a strong tradition of popular protests, you have to take into account how people perceive certain issues. And the popular opinion in China was never fully favorable in Ukraine, unfortunately. The reasons for that is mostly a lack of knowledge of China, of modern China's side of common stereotypes that the country is poor, it's a backwards country. And China's growing ties with Russia, conflicting political values and so on. And you know the red flag with stars, the Communist Party, a dear leader. All of that brings up phantom pains from not so distant past, even the bare visuals of national Lianghui, two sessions, for example, invoke quite unpleasant recollections of many Ukrainians, reminding them of their past lives and the prison of the peoples. And on China's side, there is a huge lack of knowledge of Ukraine as well, outdated views on Ukraine, often conflating Ukraine with Russia. And in the recent decade, Ukrainian society went through massive, multiple foundational changes. There is a huge gap between the imagined Ukraine and current real-life Ukraine. And the imagined Ukraine, I call it, is the perception of the country by Chinese experts mostly, those experts on post-USSR independent states. For example, there is a tendency to largely overestimate the importance of Ukraine and Russia's common historical and cultural background. The role of Orthodox Church in Ukraine is of Russia. All of this was indeed important in Ukraine some 50, 20 years ago, but since 2014, annexation of Crimea, war in Donbas, and the invasion that began almost a year ago. All of that makes these common grounds a thing of the past. But still, you can often see how Chinese experts describe Russians and Ukrainians as basically the same one people, which is extremely offensive for many of Ukrainians. And the stone deafness is, unfortunately, very prevalent. Since February 24th, the question of who is China supporting this conflict was asked so many times, and so many quite different answers were given. With the Putin-C meeting that took place just weeks before the invasion and the proclamation of mutual limitless support and friendship, for many in Ukraine, it was almost evident that China had Russia's back in the war. In the first weeks, we were really actively watching very closely what was the Chinese interface saying? What was Long East's reaction to all of that? And some experts were really grasping at straws, claiming that China picked the side of Russia or China picked the side of Ukraine. They were dissecting and over-analyzing every phrase to find some underlying connotations. And very soon it became clear that China decided to be China's side, at least in appearance. It looks like China is not really willing to risk secondary sanctions for outwardly supporting Russia and is not empathizing with the struggle of Ukraine enough to even send humanitarian help, aside from one small batch of some supplies that they sent through the International Red Cross Society that was in March last year. And now even here, mostly unconfirmed reports of China sending non-lethal supplies for Russian army or sending some maybe even lethal supplies for the private company of Wagner. But the worst thing, I guess, is the media coverage of Russian invasion in Chinese media. And this is not something that can be fully appreciated by common Ukrainian, but many of the more outrageous news pieces, they really still make their way to the Ukrainian public through translation. And you have the Great Translation Project, for example. And in my opinion, the Chinese media coverage of the war is one of the greatest harms to any possible future Ukraine-China relations, if not the greatest threat to it. There are misconstrued and false narratives on Ukraine. Ukraine is a puppet of NATO, the US, Ukraine has Nazis, Ukraine has biolabs, et cetera. And all of that is driving many Ukrainians away from China. Sometimes, even quite literally, we have some colleagues who were basically forced to move away from China because they felt unsafe staying there as Ukrainians who are vocally supporting their homeland because they had some problems with the police. And now we see Ukrainian politicians, MPs, experts calling for limiting or even cutting relations with China and focusing instead on Taiwan. And these voices are not yet the majority, but the people's support is very much on the Taiwan side, as Ukraine sees, Ukrainians see a lot of common with it. And with time, these voices will be growing more stronger, I guess. And it's something that we will have to deal in the nearest future, I believe. And on the official level, it is very obvious that Ukraine is attempting to govern all possible support from as many countries as possible, including the PRC. However, with the latter, these attempts appear to be pointless. Some even say counterproductive. Since early 2021, Ukraine does not have an ambassador in China. And the process of appointing a new one seems to be underway, but unfortunately, it is going very, very slowly. President Zelensky made some public gestures to show that Ukraine is open to a dialogue with China. Apparently, our diplomats chose to take a moderate, non-assertive route to approach China, known as demanding or pushing China to openly support Ukraine to give weapons instead. Zelensky says that Ukraine is happy about China's neutral stance. And that's not something you'd expect with some European countries, for example, and understandably so. The last thing we want is China as an enemy. On the more personal level, things are a bit different. There are surprisingly many people in China who support Ukraine despite all of this disinformation spread. And we haven't heard about private businesses in China willing to send humanitarian support to Ukraine. Unfortunately, we have no reports of the results of such ideas. So one of the best things that can describe what China is doing right now in Ukraine or with Ukraine is a Facebook post that was posted by the Chinese embassy in Ukraine. That was the first post on Facebook on their page since the beginning of the invasion. And it was mid-December. And it said, well, we know that Ukrainian children are struggling in these horrible times. And we want to cheer them up. We want to send them some gifts. So please register, and we will send some gifts to them. And the gifts were very generic panda bears, toys, and some souvenirs, which is two months in Russia just destroying our infrastructure. And you would think that Ukrainian children would at least like some, I don't know, warm blankets or something. But no, just generic panda bears that were probably lying around in boxes in the embassy anyway. And naturally that attracted a lot of Ukrainian users on Facebook. And the comments were, well, you would imagine not too good. And apparently someone working in the embassy, a Chinese citizen, I believe, was trying to defend this post and there was quite a quarrel in the comments. And the person started writing some obscure Chinese chunyu with translations and just basically just sum up to, well, you should be appreciative of our support. We're doing what we can. So that's very symptomatic. That stone deafness is very symptomatic of Chinese actions, Chinese relations with Ukraine for now. But in general, I'd say that it seems that both China and Ukraine are facing the same issue. It's like, complete the sentence, friend of my enemy is my what? So China doesn't want to give an answer to that. And Ukraine doesn't want to give an answer to that. And it's a very gray area at the moment, I would say. And in war, it is not immediately obvious from the outside. But when you're at war, especially when you're fighting gates and invader, the world is very black and white. And China is very adamant on staying in that great zone, which brings a lot of problems for Ukraine. Thank you, Visha, for this very interesting perspective from a Sinologist's perspective in Ukraine. Let me move on to you, Joan. And perhaps you want to engage some of what she has already said. But what I wanted to ask you is, what does China want? What does China want? What does China want in the war? But why is China taking what would appear to these interested third parties as a convoluted and perhaps inconsistent approach to the war? The gray, staying in a gray zone in a black and white situation, as Dr. Hobo explains, what is driving China's policy here? Well, there's big questions. Like the Ukraine experts whom Yevhenia referred to, who analyzed every phrase and couldn't figure out exactly what was going on in Beijing, I think we're all very much in the same situation. It's very hard to say what China does want. I just make a general point that we know quite a lot about China's position on most important questions of international relations, current issues, whether they are close to China or far away. There's a fair amount of informed comment in both by Chinese officials and by Chinese academics. But if, for example, you go to the web page of the Chinese Institute of International Studies, the General Guozhi Wenji and Zhou Yuan and look at their commentaries, they publish 30 or 40 commentaries a year, you'll find almost nothing of any substance on Ukraine and indeed recently two long articles on Chinese foreign policy and Xi Jinping's foreign policy were published, didn't even mention the word Ukraine. So we're in some difficulty there. But what do they want? I think we can see one or two issues fairly clearly. The clearest one is no nuclear escalation and no threat to the nuclear escalation. I think that Xi Jinping made this particularly clear when he met Chancellor Schultz, but also it has been made clear in various other ways. And I would suggest, although we cannot be entirely sure, that this is a red line for China and that Putin was probably referring to this at the Samarkand meeting in September when he said he understood China's concerns and what's that effect. If you go on to look at the other things which Chinese say, for example, they defend the UN Charter, they often say that. They don't say that in the explicit context of Ukraine and it's hard to see how they square that with Russia having violated the Charter. They just keep silent on that. They haven't suggested alternative wordings or resolutions which might deal with Russian concerns. They've just abstained and abstained and abstained. I have to add that they did abstain on eight years ago on Crimea as well. They talk about from time to time, not very often about wanting an immediate ceasefire. They say that occasionally. There's no indication they work with other states who call for an immediate ceasefire like Hungary or Turkey or India or Indonesia to do anything. They say the war should end through negotiations and they say they're trying to help this and they're doing it in their own way. They use the same phrase again and again in our own way, in our own way. We don't know what that way is. Finally, as Eugenia has already mentioned, they talk a lot about the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine but they've only given a very small amount of aid and that was in the first month after the war. So a convoluted position. Yes, I think it is. I think I would disagree with Steve with what you said that China is paying no price. I think they are paying the price of inaction and the reason for that we can discuss later. And again, if Henry says China is on China's side, well, maybe that's true but again, I don't think this is very much to China's advantage. I think they're hamstrung by certain characteristics of the, I would say, the Chinese presidential rule. I think Xi Jinping put them in an awkward position right from the start and he put himself in awkward position too, as well as the, that we won one answer. And the other answer is, I think Yehven also alluded, the difficulty of deciding who is really your enemy. Of course, a classic Mao analysis is you decide which is the major contradiction. Major contradiction is the United States and therefore you support Russia. But having done that, Putin turns out to be a pretty major contradiction himself. So I don't think China is in the right position. I'll leave it there. Thank you, John. Since you raised the issue of paying no price or incurring cost, can I get back to you on that one first and before I move on to Masin? The point that I was making about China paying no price as a policy was to indicate that they are not going to do anything that would trigger secondary sanctions and therefore not supplying weapons to Russia directly, which would almost have to trigger secondary sanctions. Other kinds of support, non-lethal supports that Dr. Ho-bo was talking about would not have triggered sanctions. I think what you're talking about is that they are paying a price in reputational terms of their actions. But if they don't see it that way, then they're not paying a price. Would you agree with that? Well, yes, do they see it or don't they see it? I mean, Xi Jinping talks about, in fact, I was going to quote this, that the Bo Han conference last year, he said that it's important for major countries to lead by example and act in a way of fitting their status. There's a lot of discussion in China about how China conducts a major country diplomacy but this year is now where they very similarly are not. So is that important to them or not? I think it's, I know me it means of telling but my guess is to quite a few people in Beijing, it is important to be playing the role of fitting a major country and China's not doing that. Okay, thank you. Let's move on first with Dr. Kazimarski. How does it look for Moscow? Is China living up to Xi Jinping's pledge to Putin's of unlimited friendship? Does Russia want China's to do more? Does that convoluted approach work for Russia? And if Russia wants more from China, what would that be? Thank you for these questions and for the opportunity to be here. I would start by saying that we don't know that much what actually Russia wants from China and how Russia assesses China's behavior because what Russia is avoiding is any criticism of China because any criticism of China would from the most from Moscow's perspective be admitting that something's wrong with this relationship because if I were to assess China's position I would say that Chinese companies especially in the economic sphere Chinese companies seize the opportunity and they entered the Russian market they replaced Western companies but at the same time the Chinese state has not held a strategic supporting heads to Russia because whereas we see a number of aspects that testify to China's political support for Russia it's quite often it's what we might call support on the chip support as was already mentioned by John that China or NTU Steve that China will not risk secondary sanctions and to an extent I think we need to go back to the China's response to the annexation of Crimea and Russia's reactions at that time because after 2014 the Russian elite was convinced and believed that China would come with total help to Russia under Western sanctions which were compared to the current sanctions were quite minor but at that time China decided not to support Russia there was only limited targeted support for specific projects like for instance Yamal LNG exploration by the Russian company Novodeck which was sanctioned in the West but China decides to step in and offer some help but other than that there was a lot of disappointment on the Russian side after 2014 I think it is very difficult to say what were Russian expectations in 2022 because they as we understand the whole conflict the whole war was premised on the assumption that Russia would win this war very quickly and this is once again returning to the summit on the 4th of February when the both sides declared this unlimited partnership we cannot tell what Xi Jinping knew what Vladimir Putin decided to disclose but we may assume that the Chinese side also operated on this assumption a conflict would be a short one because the Chinese side was impressed by Russia's actions firstly in Crimea then in Syria so I think that the Russian sides I would speculate that the Russian side hoped it wouldn't need Chinese, the Chinese help and after it has turned out that Ukraine is successfully defending itself many of the needs of Russia I would say strategic needs are not met because we haven't seen Chinese help that would provide Russia with means to bypass sanctions we haven't seen China stepping in for instance to take over the shares in Russian companies which the Western companies are trying to disinvest from we haven't seen massive technology transfer to help with projects which we know are delaying Russia so in this sense when there is this dripping of certain types of assistance from China to Russia my main argument would be that China has not helped Russia in a strategic manner especially the realms of economy and energy but at the same time it is really difficult I would reiterate this point as the room for debating Russia and in Russian expert circles has narrowed down so much it is difficult to say what are genuine expectations towards China in the Crimean and broader Russian experts circle and I would stop here How would you respond, Marcin, to the point that John raised earlier that Xi Jinping has articulated a no-nuclear escalation position of China? I would primarily put this position in the context of China's policy towards the West where this policy is still I would argue playing the game of bad Americans and good Europeans and China wants to show its behind-face to European policymakers and the messages that China is against the use of nuclear weapons were very much tailored with the visits of European policymakers and for me they might have been genuine but at the same time they were an instrument of strategic communication directed towards Europe to show that China is trying what it can to help with not escalating the conflict Okay, I am conscious that the clock is ticking we have got a few questions already from the audience which are very interesting but I would like to, if possible, to go another round of it before we move to the open questions but if you could slightly more succinct answers perhaps we could move it more quickly I want us to ask you, for the second round John Geetings first with the war not going so well for Russia what would be China's preferred outcome by now a year after what was supposed to be a very short effective war had started? You said China did talk about potentially looking for some kind of a negotiated settlement but what would China now like to see as the end game? What will it be prepared to do to bring about its preferred end game? Well, if China, if the establishment in Beijing is able to discuss this intelligently and there's always a question because just to look for a moment the handling of Zeru COVID there is a problem but if you have a particular policy given the nature of the Chinese top down structure it's very hard to say let's explore different possibilities if X becomes Y and so on but if there is that discussion I think China should be open let's say should roll should be open and would benefit by a negotiated solution which involved ceasefire security guarantees to Russia perhaps UN peacekeepers some sort of face-saving deal on the Donbass Crimea I think is even beyond that that's another issue that's dead on so to speak. So one can see that in theory there's no reason why China wouldn't be in view of what it says about negotiations and ceasefire and everything else and sobbing the war there'd be no reason for them not to go down that route that would also enable them to play a significant role on the world stage as well. But again, I have to say from my reading fairly extensive what the Chinese do say it's really a question of what the Chinese don't say so we don't have any clues. Okay, thank you. Let me move that on to you, Dr. Hobova with what John Gittings has outlined as what China may like to achieve in terms of a peace settlement that will be acceptable to you as a Ukrainian. Notably, John does not mention that China wants a security guarantee for Ukraine he wants a security guarantee for Russia and keeping Crimea over to you. Well, as we say here in Ukraine all future of China-Ukraine relations are being created on the battlefield right now on the front line. The attitude of China towards Ukraine is basically very dependent on how far the armed forces of Ukraine are going. There's a direct correlation that we see in the news actually. And that will define, I guess, the relations and what China wants to achieve here. I believe that China does really want to bet on the winner here. And for now it doesn't see a clear winner in this conflict, I guess, in the nearest future at least. And I guess if everything goes fine for Ukraine and Ukraine is still a country in a year or two from now China will be very eager to jump in with the investments like we see in Afghanistan now. I want to show how China is a great supporter of humanitarian cause and so on. And probably I will would see if Russia is still a country by the time I believe China would still be attempting to drag Russia into the G20, G8 and so on and will be advocating for Russia for a while now. Even if Russia faces great and dire consequences for their invasion. Okay, thank you. Let me move to you, Marzind. How would what John outlined of a possible Chinese preference for the outcome be seen in Moscow? Would that be acceptable? Would that be a basis that Russia could look at as an outcome for the war? I'm afraid that to put it very bluntly you might write this scenario of a peaceful solution in the Kremlin as well because it aligns so much with the Russian interests. And I think that this regard for Ukraine which we have been watching and one of the symptoms is this lack of any telephone call between Xi Jinping and Volodymyr Zelensky. I think that this regard has undermined China's position very much as a potential broker. But when it comes to Moscow, I think it is, I don't, I think that Moscow expects that China may not help in certain ways. But what Moscow does expect is that China want to put it once again rather bluntly, won't step Russia in the back. And I think this is this kind of authoritarian trust that both elites and both regimes have managed to build it. Russia can be certain that China won't join the Western critique. That China won't side with the West when it comes to putting pressure on Russia. Right. I'm conscious that we already got quite a few questions in the Q&A box. So instead of going round to a third round of questions and discussions with you, I'll move to pick up some of the issues being raised by members of the audience. I'll try to address as many of them as we can. The first question I would like to pick is from Yand Vendemait from Radio France International. I'll read the question out. Hello, thanks to the panelists, two questions. From the 17th to the 27th of February, South Africa is holding the Mosey two naval exercise in which warships from Russia and China will take part, coinciding with the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There was strong criticism from within South Africa's opposition, while the United States also expressed concern. The questions are one, what is the significance of these war games? Two, how does Ukraine regard these exercises and the fact that South Africa remains formally neutral in the conflict, reframing from criticizing Russia? I think there's a question that all three of you can address. But again, let's hear the Ukrainian perspective first. I'll put you here. Okay, yeah. I really don't think these war games have any significance for the war in Ukraine. First of all, it's a Navy exercise, and Navy is not much in action in Ukraine, and it's very limited on the Russian side. There have been already exercises, joint exercises of China and Russia during the war, and they had no effect on the front lines here. So it's just what it is, it's an exercise. And it's the first time I've heard about these exercises actually. So that speaks for what Ukraine thinks about them. It's not that significant at the moment for Ukraine. And joint exercises of Russia and China is a common thing really. Okay, I'll come to you last joint meetings. Marcians, how does it look from Russia? Does the timing carry any significance? I think it is a clear signal particularly to the West that Russia is not as isolated as the West would like to do it, and this is probably the biggest challenge in putting pressure, international pressure on Russia that a number of states in the global South still keep this type of neutrality and perhaps underpinned by certain anti-Western currents in their policies, but South Africa sends a clear signal just as India sends a clear signal by buying Russian oil. And South Africa sends a clear signal that it is not going to join the anti-Russian front. And I think politically it is important. And in terms of sign Russian relations, it also eases a bit this pressure or this asymmetry between Russia and China, where Russia does not rely exclusively on China in the non-Western worlds. Thank you. John, why is the Chinese Navy going so far for this exercise? Well, the Chinese Navy likes to do things. The Chinese government likes the Chinese Navy. I agree with you here, and I don't think it's a big deal. China will just say, okay, we'll do it. It probably means more to Russia than to China. But I think the point Marcian raises about South Africa is an interesting one because it reminds me that South Africa in one of the UN resolutions, I think one of the General Assembly resolutions back in March last year did put forward alternative wording in an attempt to meet Chinese objections and it wasn't passed. And it does remind us too that there's a large wave of the world, which is not pro-West, which is very upset and alarmed by Russian aggression, but nevertheless has very great concerns about the United States in particular and does not want to be aligned with the West. Okay. Let me move to the second set of questions where there are two individuals, one so was Stephen Josh and then Paul who asked, and that is the issue of Taiwan and how Taiwan fits into the picture of it. I think Dr. Hobova, you're the only one who actually mentioned Taiwan in your earlier comments. But the main thrust of the question is about how China's policy towards Ukraine may or may not be affected by its policy and considerations over Taiwan. So for that, I will start with John Gettings and we'll come back to you too. Well, as with everything else, this is entirely speculative. Of course, a lot of people have suggested that Xi Jinping went along with what Putin told him last year because the calculation was a quick victory for Russia in Ukraine would give the green light potentially to a quick victory for China in Taiwan. That's entirely speculation. If that were the case or if some people in Beijing thought that was a possibility, what has actually happened, of course, the lack of a quick victory and the enormous repercussions of the Ukraine war would have taught the Chinese exactly the opposite as it would be incredibly dangerous and destabilizing to do anything with regard to Taiwan. Okay. Marcin, anything from the Russian perspective on Taiwan? I would just see here the growing, even before the war, we have seen even Putin in particular aligning Russia's policy more and more with the Chinese policy in East Asia and to toward Taiwan in particular up to the point where Putin in one of his interviews defended Chinese policy arguing that China was not going to use force against Taiwan. So I would just mention that the growing reliance of Russia on China means that Russia will just follow what China does. Perhaps not to the point of providing military support, but politically, I would see Russia accepting any policy that China decides to take towards Taiwan. Are you implying that in the relationship between China and Russia, China is now clearly the senior partner and Russia the junior one? Absolutely, and I would argue that it has been the case for at least half a decade, but the war only has only accelerated those processes. But if you are saying that this has been the case for quite a while before the war started, then the implication of what you say is that when Putin went to China and talked to Xi Jinping before the invasion, he was effectively seeking endorsement from Xi Jinping before he enraged. Are you going that as far as that? I wouldn't probably go as far as that only because this would require a really deep level of trust between states which are distrustful by nature, I would say. In this sense, I wouldn't exclude that Russia, that the Russian leader, sought certain kinds of China's access to this policy, but I would still, I still cannot tell whether it was an explicit suggestion what Russia was doing actually. Okay, let me move on to you, Dr. Habowa, because you did in your earlier answer mention about Taiwan and how opinions in Ukraine is changing and become less comfortable with what China is doing and much more positive about Taiwan. Now, from the Chinese government's perspective, anybody saying anything so positive about Taiwan is interfering in Chinese domestic affairs. Does that worry people in Ukraine that it will make China much more supportive of Putin in Ukraine because of the change of sentiments in your country towards Taiwan? Well, first of all, the Taiwan issue is the main reason that in 2014, China did not acknowledge the Crimea annexation and that for a long time, it was quite an important thing for Ukraine. But since 2022 and with the recent escalation with Taiwan, now there is more of emotional support, emotional understanding of the Taiwan struggles because as I've said, Ukrainians feel a lot of sympathy, feel that they're in the same position as Taiwan, they're resisting a huge country. But in the grand scheme of things, I guess the situation is still very different. And from the point of view of Ukrainian officials, well, we see that they're being very careful trading these dangerous waters because we see the example of Lithuania. That was last year, I guess. And we really can't afford to have such a big enemy and we really have no need to annoy China to that extent. Okay, let me move the conversations on to a very specific questions from Christopher Mannant. And this is mostly directed again to you, John Keatings. How likely is that China would supply weapons to Russia? If NATO countries continues to escalate is in movements in the Ukraine war and Russia needs conventional weapons? Well, that's speculation again. My own view is that it would require a qualitative change in the supply of NATO weapons rather than just an incremental change. And I imagine the qualitative change would be weapons which might be used by Ukraine whether they were intended or not for large-scale operations beyond the borders of Ukraine, which is probably not very likely. I think absent that, I think China will keep well out of it. Right. Marcin, very quick response from you. You're comfortable that the Russians would be comfortable with John's response? I would speculate that the more difficult this Russia faces, the more pressing need for Chinese support will be. As we have seen Russia reaching out to Iran and most problems in North Korea, I would assume that the Russian policymakers are reaching out to China. And it is the question what, how far Beijing is willing to go? Okay. Would you like to come in, Dr. Haboba? You're comfortable with your pass on and we move on. I very much agree with John here. Okay. Let's then move on to the next questions. Bit by the more complicated questions from Julia Cecil Rotty. And she's very appreciative of your thought-provoking presentations, particularly to you, Dr. Haboba. And the question for you is, when you look at the Chinese language, scholarly literature on what the Chinese refers to as Eurasia, a policy comes up since the early moments of the fall of the Soviet Union. That is, one country, Russia, two forums, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, implying a central role for Ukraine in China's diplomacy towards the region. Given your earliest statement on China being unenthusiastic towards Ukraine and the knowledge of Ukraine mainly being formed by experts, will you say that this policy has been failing from the start or representing an ideal version of the region? If so, which role has Ukraine played in Chinese calculation in the past, especially after 2014? And is China's approach different today than what had been done previously? Okay, that's, thank you for all the question. Well, first of all, yes, I have to say that China's policy on Ukraine was mostly uninformed. For very practical reasons, so to say, for a long period, Ukraine has been a Russian speaking country and that is changing rapidly in last years. And Chinese experts on Ukraine are predominantly Russian speaking. So they only speak Russian and they only read Russian language sources, which are certainly have some bias, I guess. And I would say that just that influenced a lot of Chinese policy towards Ukraine, just being uninformed and just repeating, just treating Ukraine as part of the post-Soviet world. I'd say that's that. And for the next question is China's approach different today than what had been done previously. It's hard to say, we don't see any approach now, unfortunately. And I have spoken about that. We don't see Chinese experts reaching out to Ukrainian experts. We don't see any attempt to better understand Ukraine. Well, I believe there are people in China in the Academy of Social Sciences and whatsoever, that they're writing loads of articles and so on. But just a single fact that one of the, I wouldn't be naming him, but one of the leading experts on Ukraine and China wrote a whole article in the end of last February. So like a week after the invasion and he wrote a huge article describing how this conflict came to be and so on and so on. And in the end, he was saying that, well, after all, they're the same people, they have the same culture and all will be forgotten in the end. And I will very much be saying that this is not the case. Generations of Ukrainian will not be back to any good relations with Russians, unfortunately. And that is coming from a very well-known now expert on Ukraine. And he has changed his rhetoric a bit now that I see, but still I don't see this approach changing it. This approach changing it in the nearest future, unfortunately. Okay, let me extend this to both John and to Marcin. For John, do you agree with this analysis that the Chinese really are not understanding Ukraine well? Well, I mean, I think what we've just heard is, I know that it's absolutely true. And but I also think the mention of Eurasia in the question sort of rang a little bell in my mind. I think in a more theoretical sense, if you cast your mind back to Chinese analysis of the world as divided into contending forces with an intermediate zone in between, there were a couple of articles early on last year suggesting in a rather vague way that central Europe or loosely defined war could be a sort of intermediate zone. I think ideally if the war had not taken place, China would have regarded Ukraine as part of, and indeed this might still be valid if China does decide to revive any ideas about Ukrainian neutrality. So I think that one could imagine, sorry, I'm getting, should I be here? One could imagine China sort of sharpening its view of Ukraine as a place in the world and not just lumping it together with Russia, but seeing its value as an independent, intermediate actor on the European stage. Okay, thank you. Move it to you, Marcin, if we are looking at the Eurasia and our central Asia in particular, Kazakhstan was being mentioned. Countries that, Kazakhstan is not exactly very comfortable with what Russia is doing in Ukraine. The Chinese are cultivating Kazakhstan. Are the Russians comfortable with that? Probably not, but at the same time, Russia has little choice. And when it comes to Kazakhstan, we have seen quite a dynamic around this country because in January, 2022, it seemed with Russia's military intervention at the request of Kazakhstan president, it looked as if China was losing ground in Kazakhstan. Whereas after Russia's invasion against Ukraine, Kazakhstan seems to be moving closer to China being very specific about Kazakhstan sovereignty. But this would lead me to the fact that I would disagree with Yehennia that there is not much between China and Ukraine because my argument would be that China has made a significant strategic choice but with the silence on the war. Something which China hasn't been doing with regard to any post-Soviet state because if we look at China's policy towards the post-Soviet state, China has always been explicitly unwilling to admit the Russian sphere of influence. There was always, China has always attempted to keep the ground for its especially economic policy. And if we compare before 2022, if we compare China's policy towards Belarus and Ukraine, excellent political ties with Belarus haven't converted into good economic relations between China and Belarus. Whereas even the lack of trust on the part of the Chinese government to all post-2014 Ukrainian governments have not prevented China and Ukraine develop their economic relations with China becoming the largest partner. But I would argue that this has changed with this Chinese silence and this is the first that obvious choice that China does not say it but acts as if it considers Ukraine to be genuinely in the Russian sphere of influence. Okay. Let's move on to the next question which comes from Martin Will. It's a hypothetical question but let's put it anyway. If the Russian regime should collapse, will China respect the geographic integrity of Russia? John. I think it's a long time since China laid any territorial claims to the Soviet far east. I think one would, that probably is getting back a little too far. I think it would be great problem for China because Russia, even if Martin is right and China is the dominant partner, Russia is an important counterweight on the world's scene and China would have to rethink its own strategy but I think the answer is no. Okay. Sufficiently reassuring for Russia, Marcian? I think that the regime collapse would be problematic even would not necessarily open any opportunities for China. It would rather much more complicated Russian-Chinese relations because firstly, any change of the regime means or even the change of a leader means that a new leader has the opportunity to rethink Russia's police towards China, Russia's relations with China and Russia's dependence on China and he or she might choose to tread slightly differently. And secondly, there is still we can, once again, it's only speculation but in the case we would see the nationalist and liberal coalition against the current regime, it would also be, it might very easily become anti-Chinese with the perception of the current regime in Russia being too reliant on China and making political favors towards China in return for rather than pursuing good economic deals with China. Having said that any warning voices inside Russia are now are now silent. So in this sense, there's no debates in Russia which would speak to any fears about Chinese potential expansion. Let me extend that, Marcin's response to you, Dr. Khaboba, is the apparently increasing dependence of Russia on China, something that will be seen as a positive or a negative from a Ukrainian perspective. Personally, I don't really see this overwhelming dependence of Russia on China. We see that Russia is for now at least self-sufficient and what they're trying to achieve is more of the outward support of China from the Chinese side in this conflict and just in general. I believe that Russia is trying to show off their late relations with China and with that to lure in China with closer relations and support and so on and so on. As for the regime collapse, I really wanted to interject here. As a Ukrainian, as a salty Ukrainian at sea, I really much hope that China does not respect geographic ones that we see in Russia. But unfortunately, I don't see it really happening. Okay, thank you. Let's move on. Next question comes from Bernie Howley in the UK. The question is, and this is mainly directed against you, John, is the general population of China aware of all that which is going on around this conflict? Or are they being kept in the dark in the nature of the relationship between the leaders of China and Russia and the resulting policy around the Ukrainian invasion? Actually, I think in a way, you said that Kenya is better able to answer this because she did indicate in her opening remarks that there were people in China who supported Ukraine, which means she's tapping into a vein of opinion there, which is certainly not available to me. And on the face of it, no, the Chinese population in general do not have much of an idea. And you can understand why because of the way in which the news is being cabins and about how the Ukrainians being confined and limited. But I think we have to be cautious here because, again, I refer to COVID and the demonstrations not long ago, which are reminded that actually a lot of Chinese know a lot more than we might think because they are able of learning. They find ways to find out. So I'd like to hear what Yevhenia has to say on this. Over to you. Okay, of course, the general population of China is not very well informed in what is going around and in this conflict and this war. But all is not that bad as it seems sometimes from the outside. And we are keeping in touch with our friends and colleagues in China. And me and my fellow Ukrainian signologists, we have a small project of translating Ukrainian news from Ukraine into Chinese and publishing them in some platforms that are available for Chinese netizens on WeChat, Faisal, what have you. We see that there's not much, there's not great audience there because these resources are unfortunately restricted and we are trying to stick to those that can be used through VPN. But our mission has been to provide this source of information from Ukraine and that is coming not from some unknown journalist or bloggers or bloggers or whatsoever, but from the actual sources of the news like Ukraine Forum, Ognian, and other news agencies of Ukraine from official sources. And this information it does spread quite a bit. And from anecdotal evidence, we know that many of the intellectuals, so to say, of the people who are professors maybe or maybe students, so they have an interest in the conflict and they know not to trust fully the Chinese sources of information and they are actually seeking out alternative sources and they sometimes happen to find our translated material or they are looking at say BBC in Chinese or Al Jazeera or other major news outlets that publish their news in Chinese also. So unfortunately, I would say the larger portion of the population does not know that much about the conflict and only consumes what is provided by the television and the social media as well. But there's a significant portion of people who are trying to seek out this information and hopefully they can reach it. Can I push you a bit here? Are we talking about the Chinese population being uninformed about Ukraine? Or are they unsympathetic to Ukraine? With Russia being a familiar Greek power that they know much more about, that until at least certainly if you ask the demess that Putin created the image in China of Putin being a strong effective leader of a country that was in decline and was being revived under his strong-man leadership. And therefore there was this sense of more positive sentiments towards Russia and less towards Ukraine. Which is it? Well, I can say that the general public is really un-hympathetic. Even though they're not pro-Ukrainian actually support Ukraine, even when they're not fully informed, they still have a lot of sympathy for Ukrainians for just the daily struggle, so to say. There's just so much visual circulating on the Chinese internet with bombs out city and people's struggles, people's stories. There's a tendency for these stories to reach out to the Chinese people far better than just the news of how many people died and how many people survived in the recent rocket launch. But the emotional part of this conflict is very much grabbing the attention of many Chinese people, I believe. And for that matter, I'm really grateful that our current president has passed in the entertainment business because a lot of the PR, so to say, gets through even to China, despite all the filters, despite all the suppression of the information. There are so many strong images of the swore created here and just circulating in the internet that they somehow still get through the Great Firewall. Okay, thank you on your remark about the great communicator, your president, Zelensky. Let me move these discussions on. There's a question that I'm gonna preach to you, but I'm not quite sure who amongst you would feel most comfortable with. And the question comes from an anonymous attendee. And the question is, what do you think lies behind media reports of U.S. warning China against providing non-lethal weapons or non-lethal supports to Russia? Who would like to take on that one? Well, I'll take it on in a negative way. I mean, I'm not really, I haven't followed this. I don't know how much discussion there is of it. I would make a general remark that we know very little about the bat-channel dialogues, which I hope going on between Russia and United States and China and United States and China and Russia, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Journalists, I'm afraid have been, my former profession, have been very inquirious about what seems to me one of the most important aspect of this crisis, this war as of any war, which is what is going on behind the scenes. There are clearly restraints and restrictions which are undisturbed. For example, to give an example, Russia as far as I know, has not attacked the military supplies coming into Ukraine from outside. They haven't hit the war by whatever means of transport they come in. And we've talked about our supposition that China has put up a red flag on nuclear weapons. But the dialogue, which there must be between Russia and United States, I certainly have no feeling for it all. I'm not sure who does, anybody. Maybe Martin does. Martin? I would rather have- And including a response perhaps to John's response of Russia will not attack his supply lines outside of Ukraine for Ukraine. Perhaps that will start, turn the war to become a war with NATO. But your take on that. I actually want to extend in a sense the question to my fellow panelists. How much successful the US position is to, in a way to name and shame certain Chinese behavior and to warn publicly China from doing certain things. Is it working better when the US does it in the public or would it work better if the issue would have been kept under the radar? And the US would send only those behind the closed door signals. So this is for me the biggest question. Okay, that lists very well to a question being put by Paul, which is about, is China watching to gauge Western's responses? Does it matter? Does the Chinese worry about what the Western countries are doing about Ukraine? John? Well, just to respond to the point that Martin made, it's quite true of course that China, from the American point of view, you don't want to send public signals to Beijing because that'll put Chinese backs up even more and will encourage the 110% anti-American faction in Beijing. So it should be done privately. My point was simply that, I think Germans should try to find out a bit more of what's going on, but it should be done privately certainly. Sorry, the question is do Chinese mind what is said about them? I'm not sure whether that is by governments or by people. Are they aware and sensitive to public opinion? I mean, I have noticed, for example, over the last year that Chinese ambassadors in Washington and also in Europe tend to try to say more emollient things or to put things in a more emollient way. So I think they do, but then there are two tendencies there because there's that tendency to try to put a good face on it and try to win over Western opinion. Then there's also the Wolf Warrior tendency, which says we couldn't get less what people think. So I suspect that in Beijing, this is a contentious issue. Okay, anyone want to come back on that? If not, let's move on. It's a question that comes from somebody who again would like to stay anonymous. Does China really want to be the world's policeman? The questioner views that this conversation about China's actions would be quite underserved without discussing the road and actions of the United States. Do you see in any way how China's approach to the Ukrainian war as indicating that China either wants to be a world policeman or not wants to be? Dr. Hobova, you go first perhaps since you are most affected. Yes, okay. I really believe that China does intend to be the world police, but not in the way that you asked as seen as the world police. They really want to be the world police behind the scenes. At least it looks like. But still, if China, I believe it wants to have the same level of power and influence as the US but doesn't want to position itself in that place. That's a short answer to that. And I believe that China is actually taking steps to that, but we don't always see all these measures and their actions towards that. Okay, John, I'm actually coming to you next. I'll come to you, but I want to go to Marcin next, how does it look from Moscow's perspective? Do the Russians, does Putin see the Chinese wanting to play a world policeman's role? If so, will they welcome that? I think that looking at the experience from... Sir, looking at briefly, I would say no. From the Moscow's perspective, China doesn't want to play a world's policeman's role. And moreover, it doesn't want to play a role of a major pillar of, how to put it, rebuilding the world. Because if we look at two cases of Russia trying to pull China into the rebuilding of Syria, it has ended with nothing. Russia attempted to portray, at a certain moment, Russian experts also portrayed Russian Chinese duo as Russia providing the military muscle and China stepping in with economic support. But we haven't seen economic support for the Syrian regime. The other case was Afghanistan, where China presents a nice face, but we haven't seen a massive influx of Chinese investment in Afghanistan. It's rather Afghanistan is this kind of deadlock of the BRI. So I would say that the perception is that China is not willing to and it's not ready to pay for a genuinely major role in the international scene. Okay. John. This question opens up a huge area. Let's run again. Well, 20 years ago, Chinese foreign office officials would say to me, it's better to be number two. And I think that is for a long time, that was certainly the sort of the Deng Xiaoping approach as well, being the world's main top power and being the world's peaceman is bad luck where you don't want that row. I think that under Xi Jinping, one does see a very significant shift in certainly in terms of rhetorically. And yet it clashes with what China says at the same time about the world they want to see where all relations are consensual without no superpowers and we all get on well together. I would say this is an unresolved question as I've won, I think of many in Beijing at the moment. As far as Russia is concerned, I just add that I don't think the memories of Russia in the past and the sign of the difficulties are entirely gone. And if Russia continues to make a mess of the war, or as one president suggested earlier, actually the regime falls, then I think China would say, well, that just shows your big mistake in no longer having a communist party in charge. Okay, thank you very much. We got, I think, two minutes left. I would like to put to you all one last question and if you could give a very short 20, 30 seconds kind of answer. I will again go with you first, Dr. Hobova, being in Ukraine. And the question is quite simply, what do you see your country wanting in the coming year? A very short punch answer to that, please. Oh, that's very easy. Victory, I guess, and just keeping our territorial integrity in that soul. Okay, thank you. Marcin, what would Russia or Putin just want for 2023? Russia would like to achieve a break for in its war against Ukraine and secure any kind of victory that Putin can present to the Russian side and to the Russian elites as affirming his policy. Thank you. Put it clear and straightforward from the two countries involved in the actual hostilities. John, China. What would China like to see in Ukraine 2023? They'd like to see a magic solution which would solve all the insoluble problems, which I think causing them to scratch their heads in Beijing and leaving them in what I regard, and I think many people in Beijing would regard as an unsatisfactory position. Just possibly they might like to see or be prepared to engage in negotiations if enough international steam got gave one after a stalemate on the battlefield. Okay, thank you all very much for your very thoughtful comments and the discussion. Because we are having a webinar format, we cannot get everybody to show their appreciation to you but nonetheless, your contributions are very much appreciated and I do apologize to anyone if his or her questions in the Q&A box has not been filled to the panelists. And please be sure that all your questions have been copied and they will be put to all our panelists after the event so they will know exactly what your questions or comments are. And thank you for joining this webinar. It is my duty to join now through a close now that we are one minutes beyond our officially allocated time. I look forward to seeing some of you at our next webinar. Good night and goodbye.