ISW: Jeddah summit shows China's growing dissent with Russia over Ukraine war

China's increasing misalignment with Russia on any settlement to end the war in Ukraine was reportedly evident at the talks in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on August 5-6. 

“The Financial Times [FT] reported that the Chinese representatives at the meeting were ‘constructive’ and ‘keen to show that [China] is not Russia’,” Caliber.Az reports, citing the Institute for the Study of War.

The FT quoted one European diplomat present at the talks as saying that the “mere presence of China shows Russia is more and more isolated.”

According to the ISW report, the Chinese delegation reportedly indicated its willingness to attend the next meeting of a similar format that will likely also exclude Russia.

“A Russian insider source alleged that Russia has rejected China's 12-point peace plan for the war in Ukraine from February 2023 (which the Chinese delegation re-introduced during the talks in Saudi Arabia) and that some Chinese elites are secretly expressing their dissatisfaction with the actions of the Russian leadership regarding a peaceful settlement of the war in Ukraine,” the report says.

The ISW analysts note that the reports from the talks in Saudi Arabia and insider allegations, if true, align with ISW’s previous assessments that China is not fully aligned with Russia on the issue of Ukraine.

Moreover, they emphasise that Russia and China’s relationship is not a “no limits partnership” as the Kremlin desires.

Key Takeaways:

• Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations on at least two sectors of the front on August 7.
• Russian forces and occupation administrators continue to seek to mitigate the impact of recent Ukrainian strikes on logistics nodes along key Russian ground lines of communication (GLOCs) connecting occupied Crimea with occupied Kherson Oblast.
• Russian opposition media outlet Verstka suggested that the Russian Investigative Committee and its head, Alexander Bastrykin, are directly involved in the forced deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia and the forced placement of Ukrainian children into Russian military training programs.
• The Ukrainian delegation at the talks in Saudi Arabia presented a 10-point peace plan that reportedly included calls for global food security, nuclear safety, environmental security, humanitarian aid, and prisoner releases.
• Ukrainian officials reported that Ukrainian and Russian forces conducted a prisoner-of-war (POW) exchange on August 7.
• Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, along the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast on August 7 and made advances in certain areas.
• The Kremlin continues efforts to portray itself as adequately mobilizing the Russian defence industrial base (DIB) for a protracted war effort.
• Russian occupation authorities continue to use maternity capital benefits to coerce Ukrainian civilians in occupied territories to accept Russian citizenship and increase social control in occupied areas.