Putin turns to allies in Beijing, Pyongyang and Tehran as Ukraine presses its counteroffensive

(Originally published Sept. 8 in “What in the World“) The Administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has asked Congress for an additional $13.7 billion in aid for Ukraine, which would include $7.2 billion in new weapons.

That’s on top of the $40 billion in aid approved earlier this year and comes as Ukraine expands its counteroffensive around the southern city Kherson with a surprise attack against Russian invaders in northeastern Kharkiv.

A defiant Russian President Vladimir Putin said he plans to meet next week with China’s President Xi Jinping in Uzbekistan. While he didn’t say so, he may be hoping to ask China for weapons. Moscow has been forced to start importing combat drones from Iran and ammunition from North Korea.

Iran now has enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, but U.S. intelligence says many of its combat drones are defective.

Putin may find a more receptive ear from Xi following a string of visits to Taiwan by U.S. legislators meant to reassert American military support for against a crescendo of Chinese military maneuvers around the island. The visits have apparently backfired: rather than convincing Beijing to back down, Chinese military aircraft are now intruding daily across the unofficial median line between Taiwan and the mainland coast.

These incursions aren’t technically a violation of Taiwan’s airspace, since the median line is just a convention, not an official border or DMZ. And parts of Taiwan, notably the Quemoy, or Kinmen, islands, sit within just a few kilometers of the mainland. But they are clearly meant to be provocative, or at least retaliatory from China’s perspective. Beijing sees its latest aggression against Taiwan as a warning to the renegade province and to Washington against encouraging its independence.

To the Pentagon, the incursions are a dress rehearsal for invasion.