Will the East sell Russia out to Americans? Very few people in Moscow are worried

You need your friends to call you when you are in trouble, at least to hear them express their support. And that’s what happened to Russia these days when dozens of world leaders called Moscow to show support amid the attempted revolt. Some of them asked to keep their call confidential, says Sergei Lavrov, the foreign minister, others did it openly. China might have been the most vocal of friends, and not only on the top level. It was business as usual through the last turbulent weekend, with yet another conference opened in Beijing on the future of Russo-Chinese ties, or a foreign ministries-level discussion on the joint anti-missile defence. People in Russia have noted the Chinese habit of seeing and saying the obvious when the West somehow seems to be incapable of that. Look at the video column in the Global Times, presenting the main lesson of the failed coup: “The West has deliberately underestimated the Kremlin’s capacity to handle complicated circumstances”, but “Putin’s ability to deal with complex challenges should not be underestimated.” Our public attention towards foreign reactions to Russia’s troubles and victories may be attributed to traditional pessimism towards the outside world. Here we may mention some people’s reaction to the recent State Secretary Antony Blinken’s visit to China. You just could not escape their inevitable suspicion that China may sell Moscow down the stream, joining hands with the US. The good news is, these people have definitely moved to the fringe of our political thinking, as in being considered complete nuts. Let’s have a look at the wild ideas of a columnist for the Tsargrad (King’s City) website. The American plan to destroy Russia with China’s hands is already in motion, this columnist says. But it was not Anthony Blinken’s recent visit to China that had shown us that grim reality, it was Bill Gates coming to Beijing days before the State Secretary. As a result, Blinken has deliberately signed a capitulation to China, since people like the venerable Henry Kissinger want to bring the US and China back to containing Russia. After all, these panicmongers say, the situation of the early 1970s, when US and China joined hands in containing the USSR, was similar. Both nations were weak at that time. The US was losing the war in Ukraine… sorry, I meant Indo-China. While China was just weak. So it’s wise to remember it, just in case. While the serious Orientalists, commenting on Blinken’s visit to China, were not panic-stricken at all. True, we all have noted one obvious thing: That visit is an admission of America’s weakness, America’s inability to go on pressing China as it did before. Dmitry Drobnitsky is not a Sinologist, he is an expert on the US, with deep knowledge of the inner working of the American political machinery. He says that personally Blinken and his boss, Joe Biden, have failed in their China policy, so they need success, which China will not grant them too easily. They thought, he says, they could cooperate with China in some spheres and contain China in other fields. That’s their idea of a détente with a rival. But it will not work, not with China anyway. President Obama tried the same approach to Russia some years ago, and it failed, too. So America has to rethink deeply its standard methods in such situations since China is big and strong enough to lay down its own rules of conducting a dialogue. All that means that things today are not as they were in the early 1970s. America may be weak again, but China is not. That new China is unlikely to be pressed into any form of an anti-Russian ploy. Here you have to admit that excessive optimism may be the flavour of the month now in Moscow. The thing is, Russia has been waiting for months for a Ukrainian offensive, launched by 22 NATO-trained brigades and using all these German, American and French tanks and personnel carriers. Western propaganda was flaming these fires relentlessly. And, finally, that offensive began on 4 June, resulting in fields of burned NATO machinery, huge Ukrainian losses and no ground yielded. Finally, Moscow managed to defuse a coup by a well-known troublemaker, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in just one day without a shot fired from the government’s side, and the troops slightly advancing on the Ukrainians at the same time. So you just have to see the whole world through the rosy spectacles in such cases, fearing not betrayals and other calamities. Winners have seldom been betrayed, you know. But how about Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s trip to the US, which has coincided with the Russian coup? Here, again, there was no pessimism or deep suspicion on the Russian side. How about “the backroom negotiations on (getting) India to toe the line on Ukraine”, or about “more efforts to wean India away from Russian arms imports”, and “selling lots of US hardware”, with “fighter aircraft engine under discussion”, and the rest? But these were the quotes from this website, not from a Russian one. Should Russia fear a possible Indian betrayal? Not in the least, says Timophei Bordachev, a hard-nosed foreign policy realist. India, he says, has gained a lot thanks to its ability to use both sides of the current conflict to its own advantage. It has acquired the possibility to narrow down its power gap with China thanks to its ability to be independent. While the US, Bordachev goes on to say, desperately need to show everyone that it can deal not only with the narrow circle of loyal followers. Delhi will get a bonus for that, in investments and technologies. And that’s the last thing Russia should worry about. The world is becoming a trilateral system, says the fiery philosopher Vladimir Mozhegov. Russia, he notes, can only gain from the global power, balancing between India, China and the US. And I can only heartily agree with both of these gentlemen. The author is a columnist for the Russian State agency website ria.ru, as well as for other publications. Views expressed are personal. Read all the Latest News, Trending News, Cricket News, Bollywood News, India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.