In the days before Russia's massive military assault on Ukraine, most analysts focused their attention on whether Ukraine's much smaller military could offer any meaningful resistance to Russia's near-certain victory. The Russian assault that actually took place, however, was not the one both Russia's own leaders and outside military observers were suspecting. The Russian advance has shown a seemingly egregious lack of coordination, has been hampered by an inability to subdue Ukrainian air defenses, was immediately hindered by a lack of fuel, food, and other supplies, and in the north of the country either was confined to narrow roads, vulnerable to attack, or succumbed to the deep mud of eastern Europe's spring thaw.
Now Russian military objectives seem far-fetched, with no real possibility of gaining control of the country and the new best-case scenario, a Ukrainian guerrilla warfare campaign against Russian occupiers that could last for years, itself looking untenable in the face of unprecedented international sanctions.
After two weeks of Russian combat, Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin faces his own worst case scenario: The exposure of Russia not as military superpower, but as kleptocracy so brazen that it may have undermined even his military's most basic functions. And now there's even more signs that Russia's would-be superpower status may be even more tenuous than was previously thought.
In what appears to be another intentional publication of U.S. intelligence intercepts, multiple news outlets are now reporting that Russia is now asking China for resupply of dwindling military supplies. According to The Washington Post and the Financial Times, U.S. officials are unwilling to state what kind of weapons Russia has been requesting or how Chinese officials have responded.
That Russia is looking to refill military supply lines with new urgent imports from their one remaining pseudo-ally, a mere two weeks into the war, brings Russian military readiness even further into question. The Russian military's stockpiles are too bare to support two weeks of war in locations only tens of kilometers from the nation's border?
U.S. intelligence officials are likely divulging the Russian request to China as means of pressuring China into refusing to comply. Chinese leaders were said to be as blindsided by Putin's decision to attack Ukraine as Putin's own troops were, and the nation has so far tried to stumble its way into something resembling neutrality. It is not in China's interests to see Putin's government fall, or for their most consequential fellow competitor to the United States to be exposed as a hollowed-out pretense of what it claimed to be. But it is also not in China's interests to remain the sole significant holdout in an international sanctions regime premised bluntly on a rejection of military imperialism.
The intelligence leak by American officials is likely a way to further pressure Chinese leaders into taking a side. Providing weapons to Putin's military would brand China as an accessory in the invasion. At the least, Europe and the United States both want China to stay out of a war that threatens to escalate into wider international conflict with every new Russian gambit.
Though China has long looked to Putin's Russia as partner in combating U.S. influence in its hemisphere, Putin's invasion has put China's government into a no-win situation. External analysis of China's possible moves paints a bleak picture, as all roads appear to lead to a severely damaged Russia that can no longer fill that role—and new unity in the international community that will prove a greater obstacle to China's own military ambitions than the pre-invasion status quo. Chinese leaders have little to gain from standing by Putin even as Putin loses, cannot risk involving themselves to any extent that would genuinely help Putin to win, and could themselves face unified international sanctions for even attempting it.
China's only plausible move, according to that analysis, is to abandon Putin and attempt to limit the damage. The current attempts to remain vaguely neutral will only rebound more harshly on China as a desperate Putin attempts to escalate his conflict in an all-or-nothing bid to salvage his nation's stature—and his own skin.
We can expect U.S. intelligence "leaks" to crop up quickly, if Chinese leaders give the go-ahead to Russia's new weapons requests. It won't go unnoticed. And that means that the United Nations and other nations are now putting China in a position where neutrality can't be faked. China will either provide the weapons or it will not. The nation's frustrated leaders can't stall for time much longer.