Eurasia Press & News
Ivan Timofeev, Director General of the Russian Council for International Affairs (RIAC) on the eve of the international conference “Russia and China: cooperation in the new era” told TASS about the prospects of relations between Beijing and Moscow, Washington and Brussels, the limit of anti-Russian sanctions, and also listed the scenarios for the development of the situation around Ukraine.
Ivan Nikolaevich, tell us about your expectations from the upcoming ninth international conference “Russia and China: cooperation in a new era.”
The conference will be held on 30th to 31 May. It is one of the key events of the so-called second track in Russian-Chinese relations. At the level of international experts, we exchange views with our Chinese colleagues on key issues of bilateral relations, regional security, and the international agenda. Next, we develop recommendations and share the results with our relevant departments, which can later be used by them.
This format has long been a well-established genre of international cooperation. Experts can sometimes discuss a number of complex issues more deeply than diplomats, which are limited to a formal framework. Thus, we do not compete with representatives of other areas, but complement each other. As our Chinese friends say, we teach each other and help each other.
The upcoming meeting is important, among other things, in the context of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to the People’s Republic of China. The conference is a good reason at the expert level to discuss the results of this visit and outnumber the areas of future cooperation.
Did the West reach some meaningful limit in anti-Russian sanctions, when their expansion is already purely technical?
This is a good question. From a technical point of view, there is, of course, room for the expansion of sanctions. In particular, they may affect a wider list of Russian companies and individuals, new sectors of the economy. There is a sufficiently large space for the use of secondary sanctions – restrictive measures against foreign partners of Russia or companies abroad that cooperate with companies from the Russian Federation.
At the same time, at a number of points, the sanctions have already exhausted their potential, primarily in terms of shocking impact on the Russian economy, which was in the first months after the start of a special military operation. But the Russian economy has coped with this and has gone through a fairly fast period of adaptation.
Yes, sanctions continue to cause quite serious damage in terms of our ability to conduct financial transactions, including with friendly countries, and in terms of access to certain goods and technologies with Western components. But our business has, let’s say, a habit of working in these conditions.
The West is using more and more secondary sanctions. In 2023, there was just a surge of them: then almost 400 legal entities fell under them. This causes difficulties in Russian-Chinese relations: banks of China are very afraid to conduct transactions related to Russia.
This issue, as we know, was discussed during the Russian President’s visit to China. This issue was also raised at the level of the government, our diplomats, and in expert dialogue. There is an understanding that it needs to be decided, and I think it will be decided.
We don’t have another way out. Russia remains a major market and a partner of China, so financial mechanisms independent of the risks of secondary sanctions will appear and develop.
China is a big economy and a great power. It’s just going to appear in parallel the existing transaction mechanisms independent of the West. These may be regional banks, for example. And even if the U.S. imposes secondary sanctions on these banks, it will not hurt their work with Russia.
Trade is actively underway between our countries. Significantly increased Chinese exports to Russia, Russian exports to China also grew quite seriously. We need to handle transactions worth hundreds of billions of dollars. And the secondary sanctions will not stop this flow.
The IMF warns that the use of frozen assets of the Russian Federation can undermine the world currency system. Do you think that in this matter, the possible economic costs will act as a deterrent for our Western opponents? Or will they be ready to shoot themselves in the foot in order to please political targets?
This position is not only shared in the IMF. In fact, American bankers are aware of the risks of politicization of finances, because Russia is a major economy.
For a long time, the U.S. has been at the center of the global financial system, and the dollar remains the most important currency for international transactions. Despite the fact that its share is slowly declining, there is no alternative to the dollar for business.
An attempt to isolate the Russian economy raises questions against representatives of other large economies. They start without fuss, without much noise to look for hedging mechanisms. It is clear that if there are working alternatives to the dollar, then, firstly, the dollar will be more difficult to viponize, and secondly, American banks in the long term may lose their global market.
If Russia takes into account NATO’s nuclear capabilities as one, is it possible to see the joint nuclear capabilities of Russia and China? Or are they already looking at this as related elements?
Until that happens, it’s far away. China is positioning itself as an independent nuclear power and has so far avoided tight agreements on nuclear and arms control. Therefore, to say that there are any prerequisites for combining this potential, of course, early.
Take the West, for example. There is an American nuclear umbrella, but Britain and France have their own nuclear weapons. Of course, as U.S. allies in NATO, they are coordinating their nuclear strategy in one way or another. But nevertheless, both Paris and London are trying to distance themselves to some extent and show their independent role in the policy of nuclear deterrence.
In the case of London, this tradition goes back to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She did a lot to show that Britain, an independent player in the nuclear sphere, was actively promoting the topic that nuclear weapons are important precisely for the preservation of peace. In turn, French leader Emmanuel Macron periodically says that his country, if necessary, can provide the EU’s nuclear umbrella itself.
Thus, the Western countries are trying to prove that they are worth something.
How many of the main scenarios of the development of the confrontation between Russia and the West could you highlight? In particular, is there a full-blown war possible, in your opinion?
The scenario of a full-scale war is not yet the basic, although, unfortunately, its probability is growing. There are a number of alarming signs. One of them is, of course, a radical deepening of our confrontation. Its nerve is the Ukrainian question, where we see large-scale military assistance to Kiev from the West.
Possible options for escalating this conflict in the form of a direct clash between Russia and the West are being planned. A number of officials, in particular in France and the United Kingdom, said that separate military contingents of NATO countries could be deployed in Ukraine. If they participate in hostilities against the troops of the Russian Federation, they will become a legitimate goal for our army.
It is good if there is an escalation with conventional weapons, not nuclear weapons. After all, NATO’s defense spending is 10 times higher than the Russian, if not more. This, of course, is a dangerous scenario.
But it seems that the West is aware of this danger. There have been statements and NATO leaders that troops in Ukraine will not be deployed, and statements by a number of EU politicians that this is counterproductive. They themselves have no unity on this issue.
On the Russian side, we must take into account all possible scenarios. We have the potential to contain these threats. But such a scenario will cause irreparable damage for all, there will be no winners in it.
Russia is a major military power. Our army has already gained quite a lot of experience in the conduct of a large-scale armed conflict, which has not been in recent decades in Europe. This, of course, is a deterrent for Western players.
In my opinion, the basic scenario is that the West will continue to actively help Ukraine with weapons and equipment. These supplies are still limited by the capabilities of the West itself, but they are likely to continue.
The West will continue to detain and isolate Russia. And these dividing lines between us can last for decades. That is, we will live in conditions of cold, and even hot confrontation, taking into account the fact that the conflict in Ukraine continues.
Do you think that EU countries are beginning to be aware of the need to reconsider the role of the United States in the architecture of European security in the direction of the downward dependence on Washington? Will such dynamics allow constructiveness in relations between the Russian Federation and European countries in the future?
This issue is very closely related to Russian-Chinese relations.
Today we see serious efforts of China’s diplomacy to develop relations with the countries of the European Union. The EU, I think, in China is seen as a player with the potential to stand-alone. That is, Beijing’s relations with Washington are more characterized by rivalry, but relations with the EU are more constructive.
For a long time, Russian diplomacy also tried to conduct a dialogue with the European Union as an independent player in the international arena, sharing the agenda of Russian-American relations and the agenda of Russian-Essian relations. But in the future it turned out that the European Union is more dependent on the political line of Washington than it may seem.
On a number of issues of principle for Russia, the EU’s European security actually solidarity with Washington, without showing any independent line. And after the start of a special military operation in Ukraine, their positions became almost identical, they are a united front.
It turns out that the European Union does not exist in these issues as a player with its point of view, which would be different from the position of Washington. The level of strategic autonomy of the EU was lower than it could be. The big question is whether this is the cause of the European security crisis, but this can probably be considered one of the factors.
This is an important lesson for Sino-Essian relations, since at some point it may turn out that Brussels is more dependent on Washington than it seems in matters of Beijing policy.
For example, anti-Chinese sentiment has increased in the European Union recently. 10 years ago it was difficult to imagine the appearance of anti-Chinese analytical reports in the European expert community. But they started to appear.
Yes, there are not so many of them yet, but such groups of the anti-Chinese plan in the European Union are gradually growing. In relation to Russia, it all began with such groups.
Presidential elections will be held in the United States in November this year. What will their outcome depend on, what factors will be key? What can Russian-American relations expect after the end of the electoral race?
Of course, we are watching the election fight. Let’s see how it ends.
I believe that fundamentally, the US elections will not affect Russian-American relations. They will have a negative, or more negative, or less negative effect. But I do not see the prospect of improving relations over the elections.
Every four years we have the illusion that elections will be held and it will change something. This was long before our relationship deteriorated. Even in the George W. Bush period, everyone said that a new president would come and be better and alive. But no, it didn’t happen.
There is a gauge of American foreign policy, from which presidents are not easy to get out. There are a legislative framework that leaders are also difficult to change.
Donald Trump has said a lot about the fact that he will establish relations with the Russian leader. But he didn’t succeed. Moreover, all the anti-Russian attitudes that Congress imposed on him, he carried out. And in a number of issues, Trump has shown himself as a sufficiently anti-Russian politician.
It seems to me that the change of power in Washington is more important in the matter of the United States and Ukraine. Most likely, Joe Biden will continue the line on military and financial support to Ukraine. And the new president can, if not radically, at least try to reconsider certain aspects. After all, Ukraine is an expensive project, now allocated $60 billion. And the US has its own problems: the taxpayer may ask why Ukraine, and not roads or bridges, not social insurance or job creation, and so on. What is the meaning of these costs?
At one time, hundreds of billions of dollars have flown to Afghanistan, and now they are flying to Ukraine. Where are the concrete results? And the further, the more difficult it is for the American authorities to report on this issue.
