In some respects, she argues, his vision is similar to that of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, but devoid of the latter's moral sensibility. She draws attention the the ultimate irony—that Putin's actions to restore Great Russia might in the long run turn it into a vassal state of China.
Like the dissident author and Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Putin has long indicated a desire to restore the Orthodox Christian kingdom of Rus’ – the basis of Russian civilization – by building a “Russian Union” encompassing Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and the ethnic-Russian areas of Kazakhstan. With the invasion of Ukraine in full swing, other former Soviet republics began to worry, but, as Putin assured Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Russia does not “plan to reinstate the empire in former imperial boundaries.” It is the Slavic nation, which is unduly under “third countries [rather than his] control,” that he worries so much about.
Putin apparently assumes that China will back him. But while he launched the invasion just weeks after concluding something akin to an alliance agreement with Xi in Beijing, Chinese officials’ reactions have been very distant with calls for “restraint.”
Given Putin’s near-total reliance on China for support in challenging the US-led international order, lying to Xi would have no political or strategic advantage. That is what is so worrying: Putin no longer seems capable of the calculations that are supposed to guide a leader’s decision-making. Far from an equal partner, Russia is now on track to become a kind of Chinese vassal state.