As Vladimir Putin reels from the biggest threat to his grip on power in years, his counterpart in Beijing will be considering the impact on the balance sheet of his support for the Russian president. The Wagner group’s mutiny, in which troops led by Yevgeny Prigozhin came within a few hundred kilometres of Moscow, has exposed divisions in Russia’s armed forces and cracks that threaten to undermine the stability of China’s most powerful ally. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, Xi Jinping, China’s president, has been unwavering in…
Tag: Yevgeny Prigozhin
China downplays Wagner rebellion as Russia’s ‘internal affairs’
Chinese officials have described an aborted rebellion by the Wagner group of mercenaries as Moscow’s “internal affairs”, while one state media mouthpiece dismissed the divisions in Russia as an “illusion” being exploited by the west. Russia’s deputy foreign minister Andrei Rudenko held talks in Beijing on Sunday after the most serious challenge to president Vladimir Putin’s grip on power since he came to power in 2000. China’s foreign ministry initially said only that Rudenko had exchanged views with China’s foreign minister, Qin Gang, on Sino-Russian relations as well as “international…