'Your only friend right now is Mr. Xi: Normal practice for Putin to go to China every year'

Oliver Farry is pleased to welcome Aleksei Chigadaev, Analyst on China-Russia Relations and Associate Research Fellow at the New Eurasian Strategies Centre (NEST Centre). Rather than reinforcing a narrative of a triumphant anti Western alliance, Chigadaev portrays a highly complex relationship marked by asymmetry, strategic necessity, and quiet unease. Far from depicting a partnership of equals, he argues that Russia increasingly seeks “legitimacy from the outside” through highly choreographed e...