In the past several months, the Trump administration has leaned hard on the Kremlin, seeking to force a breakthrough toward a durable peace in Ukraine. The White House has spent great political and diplomatic capital to bring the warring parties to the negotiation table. Washington has employed multiple instruments of national power, including sanctions, weapons shipments, and political pressure to secure a ceasefire, and lay the groundwork for a long-term peace deal. Predictably, these efforts have failed miserably. Every American attempt to move the needle towards a truce has been met with deliberate delay and stalling by the Russian side. The hard truth is that neither a ceasefire nor any peace settlement can be reached without addressing the factor too often overlooked: China.
Unlike the Biden administration, which isolated Moscow, rallied allies, and armed Ukraine, more or less successfully, the Trump administration placed greater emphasis on brokering a peace deal. In doing so, the White House pressured Kiev and pushed Brussels to align them with its new policy. While managing to keep its allies in line, Washington’s efforts have produced no tangible results with Moscow. A series of direct phone calls and meetings with the Russian counterparts in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Alaska revealed that neither the United States nor the EU possesses leverage or political capacity to compel Moscow into a ceasefire, let alone a peace agreement.
The elephant in the room is China. And to a certain extent, Moscow is fighting a proxy war for Beijing. Considering its political, economic, and technological isolation from the West, Russia is no longer an independent global player as it had been before the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. It’s worth noting that today, Russia’s war machine, resource-based economy, technological capacity, and foreign policy are increasingly dependent on China. Hence, Western leaders who seek diplomatic solutions while ignoring the growing power asymmetry in the Sino-Russian relationship, misunderstand the reality of the conflict and risk prolonging the war indefinitely. Only a string of decisive actions that up gun Ukraine, sanction Russia, and engage China will alter Putin’s calculations as a drained, weakened, and cornered Kremlin will have little choice but to acquiesce.
Hierarchical Partnership
Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has led to the collapse of Russia’s trade with the West. The U.S. and the EU isolated Moscow internationally, pushed it out of Western markets, and choked it off from advanced Western technologies, forcing Russia to pivot almost entirely to China. Beijing, taking advantage of this rift, stepped in to fill the vacuum. In a short time, China has become a primary feeder of Russia’s military machine, a key financier of its war economy, the largest importer of its sanctioned oil and gas, the major supplier of its consumer goods, and a main provider of dual-use technologies. Given circumstances, Russia, once the senior partner in the strategic partnership, finds itself a dependent state, forced to accept Chinese terms in trade, energy, economy, investment, and even foreign policymaking.
China’s Strategic Benefits From the War
Russia’s military quagmire in Ukraine has turned into a geopolitical windfall for China. By buying Russia’s sanctioned fossil fuels at steep discounts, China not only secured the cheap energy, but also tightened Moscow’s dependence on China’s demand. At the same time, Russia has become increasingly reliant on Chinese products. Currently, Chinese companies export semiconductors, vehicles, electronics, communications equipment, machine tools, household products, and other means indispensable for the state’s function and its arms production, replacing Western competitors, while consolidating economic dominance over the Russian market. This increasing economic imbalance has reinforced Russia’s vulnerability to Beijing’s leverage, boosting China’s role as Russia’s indispensable lifeline.
Beyond trade and energy, Beijing has also inserted itself in Russia’s technological and defense sectors. With sanctions barring Russia from Western know-how, Beijing has moved in to fill the void, making itself increasingly significant and largely indispensable for the survival of Russia’s tech industry. While Chinese platforms, standards, and infrastructure tend to dominate Russia’s technological ecosystem, Moscow’s capacity to build and innovate is eroding rapidly. Hence, Huawei and other Chinese companies are not only filling the gap, but they are also rewriting the rules of Russia’s digital future, hollowing out the Russian tech sector while transforming and repurposing it to run on the Chinese operating systems.
Meanwhile, the war has turned Ukraine into a live laboratory for Beijing. Chinese-made drones and electronics are tested on the battlefield in real time, while Chinese strategists are observing and studying Western military strategies, sanction packages, and resilience under pressure. It could be easily asserted that Russia’s defense industrial complex, once feared and respected worldwide, has now been tethered to Chinese suppliers, leaving it increasingly vulnerable to Beijing’s political calculations.
Near Abroad
The Ukraine war, not only exposed Russia’s limits, but also eroded its influence across its so-called near abroad. Central Asia once Russia’s unquestioned backyard, is now increasingly shaped by China’s capital, trade, and security incentives pushed through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Digital Silk Road backed by Chinese Techno-Authoritarianism, reshaping the broader Eurasian landscape. The South Caucasus tells a similar story as the local actors are drifting towards China. While Russia is consumed by the war and its militarized policies, the local governments embrace China as a more reliable and less threatening partner, with China not Russia, emerging as the region’s predominant power.
The Kremlin’s dependency on Beijing indicates that Russia can’t secure a ceasefire, negotiate a peace deal, or recalibrate its strategy without Beijing’s approval. Only Beijing has the leverage to tame Putin and push the Kremlin toward ending the war in Ukraine. It is no surprise that current Western pressure to shift Moscow’s strategic calculus without Beijing’s backing has failed repeatedly..
China is uniquely positioned to influence Moscow’s foreign policy formation as it continues to sustain Russia’s economy, keep its industries running, and provide Russia with the true political lifeline on the global stage. If Beijing were to withdraw even part of its support, Russia would risk full collapse, making Beijing not Washington or Brussels, the only capital with real leverage over Moscow’s decision to prolong or end the war.
Yet, Beijing has little incentive to act swiftly. The war weakens Russia, tightens Moscow’s dependence on Beijing, and diverts Western attention. As the war’s primary beneficiary, China’s goal is not to end the war, but to sustain it. China aims to keep Russia strong enough to bleed the West, but weak enough to remain tethered to China’s strategic orbit. Consequently, for Beijing, a protracted war in Ukraine, aligns well with its long-term strategic interests.
Why China Holds the Key
It’s been proven that a ceasefire or any peace deal in Ukraine will never be achieved by pressing Moscow alone. Any strategy that ignores China is doomed from the start, because China now holds the decisive leverage on Russia’s economic and military survival. Beijing, however, has no real incentive to end the conflict as it profits from Russia’s growing dependence and the U.S. distraction. Yet China is not without weaknesses as its geopolitical rise-economic growth and technological advance depend greatly on trading, partnering, and working closely with the particularly with the U.S.. This package of relationships creates a narrow but genuine opening for diplomacy.
Upgun Ukraine, Sanction Russia, and Engage China
A common view is that the battlefield, not the negotiating table will decide the war. Western “peace talks” or “compromise solutions” are well-intentioned but dangerously naïve. Because Putin’s war in Ukraine, is not just a territorial conflict-it is a structural, systemic war with the European security architecture and the global order at stake. The negotiation positions of Kiev and the Kremlin remain irreconcilably far apart: Ukraine cannot afford to cede territory, while Putin’s survival depends on delivering a victory. Ultimately, the outcome will be decided by military means on the ground. Any ceasefire or peace deal reached under current conditions would be temporary as both sides would rearm and prepare for the next round of war. The result will be a frozen conflict that unfreezes at Russia’s convenience-just as it did in Georgia in 2008, and in Ukraine after 2014.
Nevertheless, if Washington and Europe are serious about ending the bloodshed, they must abandon half measures. What’s now needed are decisive and result-oriented actions. Leveraging China’s influence must be accompanied by some significant policy changes, namely, Ukraine must be fully armed with the means not only to defend itself- not just drip-fed assistance under tight restrictions- but to hit back decisively. The restrictions must be lifted, and Ukraine must be allowed to strike legitimate military targets deep inside Russia.
In parallel, while reinforcing the measures already in place, Washington must sanction Russia’s oil giants, banks, and the shadow fleet. It must also crack down on ports, and service providers tied to the shadow fleet. These measures must be backed by secondary sanctions on foreign banks and financial institutions that facilitate Russian oil and gas sales, undercutting the Kremlin’s ability to circumvent the sanctions.
Lastly, the United States and the EU must confront the elephant in the room. Russia is not a truly independent power, its survival hinges on Beijing. The West must employ both sticks and carrots to compel Beijing to lean on Moscow. The strategy of pressure and incentive will make Beijing understand that it cannot have it both ways-enjoying access to Western lucrative markets while funding Putin’s war. The West needs to make Beijing choose.
A package of actions such as up gunning Ukraine, crippling the Russian war economy, and leveraging Beijing’s influence will offer the only realistic path to compel Moscow to accept a ceasefire and ultimately agree on a peace agreement. Anything short of this is managing the conflict, not solving it. The time for symbolic gestures has passed, it is now time for decisive action.
Miro Popkhadze is a Senior Fellow at the Delphi Global Research Center and a Fellow at Foreign Policy Research Institute.