‘War on Ukraine will make Russia more dependent on China’

“China is voting for the Russian Union on resolutions at international forums. It can be seen standing in favour of Russia but not supporting Russia in actual war or violating sanctions. At the same time this war will make the Russian defence mechanism a sub-state of Chinese security architecture because its capabilities have been exposed to the West (due to the war),” said Singh.

He said that the war will change the world order as Russia is losing its domestic arms, and men while at the same time the West has been funding arms worth billions of dollars to Ukraine, and its army is being trained by them.

“Russia will emerge more dependent on China post-war. While China has supported Russia rhetorically it hasn’t done so materially. While Beijing cannot afford Russia to lose the war, the post-war dependence will make Russia-China relations stronger,” he said, adding that the war has also reminded Europe how reliant it remains on the United States of America for its security.

Singh said that the possibility post-war is that the West will be a large bloc of non-aligned countries like those that existed during the cold-war era. “They will refuse to choose sides between the West and Russia/China and will try to maintain ties with all the great powers and their partners,” he said.

The lecture was chaired by Sudheendra Kulkarni, author and activist, who said that no war has done any good to society. “It is time that the foreign policy envisioned by our first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru be revisited and pursued. Any conflict, be it Russia and Ukraine or that of PoK cannot be resolved by war and violence and all ultra-nationalists in every country need to take note of it,” he said.