Russian President Vladimir Putin’s trip to China is part of the great power politics currently being played out between the West and the global south.
In this arena, China’s President Xi Jinping is promoting his multipolar view of the world, a realignment of the world’s geopolitical centre away from the US and Europe, to Asia.
Xi sees China front and centre on the stage, with a coterie of countries to back him up.
China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are at one end of the spectrum, but widen out the view and there is also Brazil, India and South Africa, who all see the world through a lens at odds with the West.
Added to that is the so-called “no-limits” friendship between Russia and China. It has been tested to the limit as Russia continues its war in Ukraine. But there is no sign China has any plan to abandon its neighbour.
First, the Russia-Ukraine war. China is under growing pressure from the US and Europe to rein in exports of dual-use items like semiconductors and machinery tools that Russia can use on the battlefield.
But if China is feeling the heat, you wouldn’t know it. Its exports to Russia surged last year. The way Xi Jinping sees it, Russia is another market for China’s export driven economy, and with Western companies banned from doing business with Russia, China has stepped in to take advantage of it.
Why Putin may visit Vietnam next
There is a possibility, Vladimir Putin will visit Vietnam after his summit with Xi Jingping in Beijing, or later this month. It would be Putin’s first state visit to the country since 2017.
Vietnam is one of Russia’s three closest partners in Asia, alongside China and North Korea.
Experts suggest a visit from Putin would signal to the world that he’s committed to a “Turn to the East” policy and allow the Russian leader to show that Western efforts to isolate his government over its invasion of Ukraine have failed.
Maintaining a close connection to Moscow is a priority for the Vietnamese leadership. They have a tricky balancing act trying to juggle ties with both America and China.
Beijing’s encroachments into the South China Sea represents a potential territorial threat to Hanoi. Whilst America is an obvious counterweight to that, the US is also considered a threat to the ruling Communist Party.
Welcoming Putin to Hanoi, a leader the West has sought to cut off, is proof the Vietnam government wants close relationships with as many powerful nations as possible.
Russia is one of its seven so-called “strategic partners” and it would come as no surprise if Putin does touch down in Hanoi. Vietnam could also be expected to seek an arms deal with its historical ally and replenish its ageing Soviet-era military equipment.
China is also resisting pressure from the West to use its leverage to force Mr Putin to wind down the war.
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While President Xi doesn’t want to see Russia in the grip of collapse, after all they share a 2,500-mile-long border, a long, grinding war in Ukraine has benefits for China.
It drains European energy and resources, distracts the US and allows China to get on with its territorial claims in Asia and its ambition to dominate international trade in EVs, solar panels and batteries.
In this Sino-Russian relationship, China has the upper hand. It’s receiving cheap raw materials from Russia and paying 30% less for natural gas than Europe did before the war. China is calling the shots.
While Mr Putin and Mr Xi have an enduring friendship, this alignment is a thorn in the side for the West. But there seems little Europe and the US can do about it. Threats aren’t working, sanctioning Chinese banks might.
For Beijing, it’s all about balance. China needs the US and Europe to remain open to its exports. So far, it has been able to have it all. However, it’s becoming increasingly untenable for the West to stand by while China stands with Russia.
A time may yet come when President Xi Jinping is forced to make a choice.
Russian air defences may have shot down an Azerbaijan Airlines flight after misidentifying it, according to US military sources.
Two unnamed officials who spoke to Sky News’ US partner NBC News said America had intelligence indicating Russia may have believed the flight was a drone and engaged its air defences.
It added that this was down, in part, due to the plane’s irregular flight pattern and altitude.
The report comes after US national security spokesperson John Kirby said on Friday that Washington had “seen some early indications that would certainly point to the possibility that this jet was brought down by Russian air defence systems”.
He refused to elaborate, citing an ongoing investigation.
The plane had been flying from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku to Grozny, the regional capital of the Russian republic of Chechnya, on Christmas Day.
During its flight, it turned toward Kazakhstan and later crashed around two miles from Aktau while making an attempt to land after flying east across the Caspian Sea.
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The crash killed 38 people and left all of the 29 survivors injured.
Azerbaijan’s transport minister Rashad Nabiyev told the country’s media that “preliminary conclusions by experts point at external impact” and witness testimony did as well.
He added: “The type of weapon used in the impact will be determined during the probe.”
Azerbaijan Airlines has since suspended flights to a number of Russian cities.
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Video shows inside plane before crash
A spokesperson for the Kremlin declined to comment on the crash, saying it would be up to investigators to determine the cause.
Dmitry Peskov said: “The air incident is being investigated, and we don’t believe we have the right to make any assessments until the conclusions are made as a result of the investigation.”
The crash was said to have taken place during a Ukrainian drone attack.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blamed Russia in a post on social media.
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Passengers and crew who survived the crash told Azerbaijani media that they heard loud noises as the aircraft was circling over Grozny.
Aydan Rahimli, a flight attendant, said that after one noise oxygen masks were automatically released and she went to perform first aid on a colleague, Zulfugar Asadov, and then heard another bang.
Mr Asadov said the noises sounded like something hitting the plane from outside.
Shortly afterwards, he sustained a sudden injury like a “deep wound, the arm was lacerated as if someone hit me in the arm with an axe,” he said.
Two other survivors described their experiences on the flight.
Jerova Salihat told Azerbaijani television that “something exploded” near her leg and Vafa Shabanova said there had been “two explosions in the sky, and an hour and a half later the plane crashed to the ground.”
If proven the plane crashed after being hit by Russian air defences, it would be the second deadly aviation incident linked to the Kremlin’s conflict with Ukraine.
Just look at the Asachyovs. Vera and her husband Timofey have eight children – from 18-year-old Sofiya to 18-month-old Marusya – and they’ve just been crowned Moscow Family of the Year.
“It’s a great honour and joy,” Vera Asachyova told Sky News when asked how it felt to win.
“It brings pride to our family, not only my husband and I but for the children and their grandmothers and grandfathers.”
And that’s not their only award.
Having had so many children, they’ve also been honoured with the prestigious Order of Parental Glory, which Vera proudly wears pinned to her chest.
The family’s beaming faces are even on billboards around town.
They’re portrayed as the model family doing their patriotic duty.
That’s because Russia’s birth rate is at a quarter-of-a-century low and the state wants others to follow the Asachyovs’ lead.
Official data shows 599,600 children were born in Russia in the first half of 2024, which is 16,000 fewer than in the same period in 2023 and the lowest since 1999.
The Kremlin called the figure “catastrophic” and is desperate to boost it.
The latest attempt is a ban on “childfree propaganda”, which was passed unanimously by Russia’s lower house of parliament last month.
It’s supposedly the promotion of life without children, and anyone caught spreading it can now be fined.
But does this propaganda really exist? Even if it does, surely there are more pressing reasons why a woman might not want to have children?
For example the costs involved, or perhaps because their partner is away fighting in Ukraine, or worse, has been killed there.
I put that to Tatiana Butskaya, an MP for Russia’s ruling party, United Russia, who sits on the parliamentary committee for Family Protection.
“This is an ideology against life on earth,” she replied, referring to the so-called propaganda.
“If [our parents] had adhered to this ideology, none of us would be at this press conference today. Perhaps it would’ve been other people here, and maybe even robots.”
Vladimir Putin has previously encouraged women to have at least three children, to secure Russia’s future.
In the same vein, Ms Butskaya went on to criticise families with only one child, calling them “strange”.
“If this family has lived together for a long time, you think, ‘Well, maybe they have illnesses? Maybe something is wrong in the family’. Right?
“They’ve lived together for 30 years and only given birth to only one child. There’s something wrong there.”
According to the authorities, childfree propaganda is everywhere – in films, on the internet and throughout the media. But that’s not how it feels walking around Moscow.
Pretty much everywhere you look there are huge billboards promoting family and motherhood. The message on one reads “we have room to grow” in Russian.
Russia insists women still have the right not to have children, but feminist activists like Zalina Marshenkulova believe that’s no longer true.
The prominent blogger left Russia soon after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and was charged in absentia with “justifying terrorism” by a Russian court earlier this year.
“It’s reproductive violence,” she told Sky News, referring to the ban on childfree propaganda. “It’s another repressive law they needed to turn all women into mechanisms for reproducing slaves.
“If you’re smart, if you love freedom, if you respect yourself, you can’t live in Russia. That’s what they try to say to us by this stupid law.”
Weavers of Ireland’s famous Donegal tweed have called for a special protected status for their product, as the craft industry battles a raft of cheaper imitations branding themselves as “Donegals”.
Urgent efforts are under way to take advantage of a change in EU policy, which could see non-food and drink products receive the same protected designation as champagne or parma ham.
Currently, a textile manufacturer anywhere in the world can produce fabric and call it Donegal tweed, often vastly undercutting the genuine producers.
“It’s not great,” says Kieran Molloy, a sixth-generation weaver at Molloy & Sons.
He says the unrestricted use of the term Donegal “is making people think it’s a craft product, when in fact maybe it’s coming from an enormous mill in the UK or in China or Italy”.
“When people maybe think of Donegal, and they’re thinking of mountains and sheep and the craft, a lot of the time that’s not what they’re getting.”
Donegal tweed is a woollen fabric with neps – or flecks – of distinctive colours spun into the yarn as its main characteristic.
The industry hopes to be awarded a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) following a 2022 decision by the European Commission to widen the categories of goods that could be protected. This would mean only fabric produced in Co Donegal could be described as a Donegal tweed.
Patrick Temple is CEO of Donegal’s largest tweed producer, Magee Weaving, and also chair of the Donegal Tweed Association.
He says the glut of foreign imposters “does detract from the business,” adding: “It also creates a mixed message for the consumer.
“The wonderful thing about a PGI, if we’re lucky enough to obtain it, is that it creates a pure message to the consumer and they know they’re buying a genuine fabric woven in Donegal.”
Magee has celebrity fans like Sex And The City actor Sarah Jessica Parker, a regular visitor to Co Donegal.
In some ways, the tweed is a victim of its own popularity, which means larger international brands can put reproductions on the market for far lower prices than the Donegal producers.
Marks & Spencer has a range of men’s wool clothing marketed with the word “Donegal”, which features small flecks of colour.
A blazer, with the fabric woven in England and constructed in Cambodia, retails for €205 in Ireland, less than half the price of many of Magee’s authentic Donegal tweed blazers.
Mr Temple examined the M&S jacket for Sky News. “It’s a pleasant blazer, in a natural wool,” he says.
“It’s emulating, trying to be a Donegal. But unfortunately, it’s not woven in Donegal, there’s a small fleck there but we can’t call it a Donegal tweed.”
“It undercuts our position in the region of Donegal, as the genuine weavers of Donegal tweed,” he adds.
Marks & Spencer stops short of describing its clothing as “Donegal tweed”, and does not claim the fabric is made in Ireland, but did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
The Donegal weavers have enlisted the expertise of colleagues in Scotland, where the famous Harris tweed has enjoyed protection from an act of parliament passed in 1993.
The legislation means that only wool handwoven on the Outer Hebrides can be described as Harris tweed within the UK.
Lorna Macaulay, the outgoing CEO of the Harris Tweed Authority, has held several meetings with the Donegal weavers, and says the geographic protection is vital.
Without the “absolutely pivotal” 1993 law, she says “we have no doubt that this [Harris tweed] industry would not have survived… it simply couldn’t have”.
“The protection it has brought has forever secured the definition of Harris tweed.”
Ms Macaulay says an appreciation of the shared culture has led to close cooperation between the weavers in Scotland and Ireland.
“When the Donegal people approached us, we didn’t consider ourselves as rivals or competitors, and in fact a really strong handwoven sector lifts all boats. There is a real will to work together,” she adds.
The Donegal weavers hope the Scottish input will strengthen their campaign. They want the incoming Irish government to help press Brussels for the coveted protected status.
It could take 12 to 18 months, admits Mr Temple, “but it’s really gaining momentum, and we hope it’ll be sooner rather than later”.