Analysis: Putin promises Xi to 'fight for five years' in Ukraine
asia.nikkei.com
Meant to keep China on Russia's side, the words in March prompted Beijing to hedge its bets
  • Lettuce eat lettuceEnglish
    60•1 year ago

    “When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men’s weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.”

    -Sun Tzu, The Art of War

    Putin will fail, as so many before him have, for the same reasons. Arrogance and pride have destroyed many warmongers, he will be no exception.

          • @Candelestine@lemmy.worldEnglish
            -2•1 year ago

            That’s at least closer to accurate. But a 25 year siege would’ve starved 99% of the people there to death, maybe ~23-24 years ago. Unless you can think of a way to feed the whole population with that tiny bit of land for a couple decades.

              • @grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
                2•1 year ago

                I’ve never heard of that historic event (or the city itself, for that matter), so I looked it up:

                • Ceuta is a city on the north coast of Africa across the strait from Gibraltar. It’s currently an autonomous city owned by Spain (and Morocco is apparently still pissed off about that).

                • The siege @Andrzej is apparently referring to happened from 1694 to 1727, with a brief interruption in 1720-1721 when defenders’ reinforcements showed up, forced the attackers to retreat to Tétouan, tried to capture that city for a few months, and then gave up and left again.

                • Apparently, the reason it lasted so long without succeeding is that Ceuta was getting resupplied by sea. In other words, the lack of accompanying naval blockade made it kind of a shitty siege.

          • @Candelestine@lemmy.worldEnglish
            6•1 year ago

            A naval strategy designed to interdict sea transport to a specific area.

            Regardless, there is neither a siege nor a blockade that has been going on for anything even remotely close to 75 years. There is a proper siege occuring there, an actual by-the-book one, but it started fairly recently. Otherwise all the people in Gaza would have starved to death a long time ago, since they can’t grow enough food on that land to feed them all.

  • AutoTL;DRBEnglish
    4•1 year ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:

    During a meeting in Moscow back in March, Russian President Vladimir Putin told his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping that Russia “will fight for [at least] five years” in Ukraine, sources have revealed.

    Whether Xi was convinced, Putin’s remark at the summit holds the key to understanding a series of mysterious developments in Russia-China relations, from a Chinese peace mission to Europe in May to China sacking its foreign minister months later.

    But given Putin’s words to Xi in March, revealed by multiple sources familiar with diplomatic maneuvering between China and Russia, the Russian leader’s reported intentions for a cease-fire should not be taken at face value.

    If the war between Russia and Ukraine grows more prolonged, it would significantly impact plans and ambitions Xi has for his unprecedented third term as China’s president and Chinese Communist Party general secretary.

    To make matters worse, less than a month later, in June, Wagner, the Russian private military organization led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who held the key to fighting in Ukraine, launched a short-lived rebellion, giving Putin a close call.

    It is important to keep in mind that conversations between the Chinese and Russian leaders in 2023, especially Putin’s March remark about prolonging the Ukraine war, can have ramifications on the security of Japan and the entire Indo-Pacific region.

    The original article contains 1,208 words, the summary contains 215 words. Saved 82%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!