Putin’s latest trip to Xi Jinping aims not only to reaffirm the strength of the vassal-like friendship between the Russian dictator and China’s leader but also to signal to U.S. President Donald Trump and all Western countries that this totalitarian tandem cannot be broken. The coalition, led by China, is focused on reshaping the world order, and for this «grand goal», the Chinese and Russian dictators are willing to do anything.

Therefore, any plans by Trump to pull Russia away from China are doomed from the start. Putin would sooner see Russia destroyed and vanish than give up on destroying the Ukrainian state, which he considers the most important mission of his life.

Is Putin finally going to admit that Moscow has become China’s lackey? After all, «Big Xi» is constantly demanding new concessions from the Kremlin, and the fact that the head of the Russian Federation has come to the People’s Republic of China for as long as four days may be a sign that Russia and China are ready to go much further than the maximum rapprochement of geopolitical positions and coordination of economic actions.

As Russia approaches economic collapse, Putin may go to any lengths, including formally establishing a Sino-Russian federation, in which China would have complete control over Russia’s natural resources. Moscow’s political and economic actions would, in all cases, be controlled by Beijing.

Because, as fantastic as such a decision may sound now, China is not helping Russia in its war against Ukraine in secret for nothing. Xi Jinping is interested in critically weakening that dubious entity that is still called Russia. And after that, Russia will fall at his feet.

These efforts overlap with attempts by China and Russia to create a new world order that’s different from the one the U.S. is leading right now. Russia seeks to destroy Ukraine and is potentially prepared to start a war with other countries on its western border, while China constantly threatens Taiwan, the Philippines, and any other country that does not recognize its hegemonic claims in the South China Sea.

Putin’s political trip to China was meant to show U.S. President Donald Trump that all his attempts to cozy up to the Russian dictator were futile. The United States will not be able to repeat what President Richard Nixon once achieved – bringing the U.S. and China closer together by exploiting the split between the USSR and the People’s Republic of China.

Now the situation is diametrically opposite, with Beijing using Russia as a battering ram against Western civilization. And it is even beneficial for Xi Jinping that Trump continues to believe that he will be able to pull Putin over to his side. This Trump’s illusion could cost the collective West dearly in the future. After all, by splitting America’s alliance with Europe, the United States will ultimately find it very difficult to resist the coalition of China, Russia, and the Global South. And Donald Trump does not want to admit that now, as the leader of the Global North, he cannot build friendly relations with Putin.

Although, Trump should be upset by the sharp rapprochement between Putin and Xi Jinping. After all, there is no place for the United States in the new Chinese-Russian world order. And if he continues to try to «appease» the Kremlin’s bloody murderer, it will be an attempt to act contrary to the strategic interests of the United States. Because the American president should not work to destroy the status of the United States as a superpower and turn it into a country that has voluntarily renounced its leading role in world politics.

All of Donald Trump’s dreams of leading the «club of lonely dictators» are shattered by the reality of life. Despite his desire to see all of his «boys» together and come to an understanding with them, Trump’s ideas have no basis in reality.

The American establishment will not allow him to turn the United States into a totalitarian state, his voters are gradually realizing the mess they willingly brought upon themselves, and upcoming Congressional and Senate elections will block his path to actions that could be suicidal for the country.

Coming to power in the U.S. under the slogan Make America Great Again (MAGA), Trump, over more than seven months, partially rehabilitated Putin’s image. This remains his main achievement to date. By playing into the hands of the Moscow tyrant, he seemed to set himself a key goal – to make Putin handshake-worthy again.

Putin wants to achieve a multipolar world. However, the question arises: does communist China want to see such a world? And how can totalitarian Russia claim to be one of these hypothetical poles when its leader has voluntarily turned it into a vassal of China? And if the Russian Federation is in geopolitical symbiosis with the People’s Republic of China, then where does one pole end and the other begin?

China has enormous influence along Russia’s southern borders, in the former Soviet republics and beyond the Caspian Sea, thanks to Xi Jinping’s One Belt, One Road initiative. Does the Chinese Communist Party view Russia as an equal partner, given that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has made Russia critically dependent on China?

This multipolar world that Putin so desires means the fragmentation of the current world economic order. It means keeping technological advances secret and preventing the transfer of new scientific inventions to unfriendly states. However, Russia is a technological desert, and China lags far behind the West in terms of technology. Totalitarian regimes cannot rely solely on their own achievements, as was clearly demonstrated by the technical backwardness of the USSR during the Cold War. The same will be true in a multipolar world. After all, totalitarian regimes are not capable of competing technologically with the states of the democratic world.

China is the biggest beneficiary of the multipolar global world order that Putin is so eager to build. But whose economic aid and technology transfer, according to Putin’s supporters, helped China rise? It was certainly not the economic and technological markets of the Soviet Union, Africa, or South America. China received all this from the United States and its allies in Europe. And now Beijing has decided to «repay» the collective West by removing it from its leading role in world civilization.

Putin and Xi Jinping have turned their countries into a coalition of China and Russia against the democratic world. This is a major problem that cannot be solved by persuading the Kremlin leader to end the war in Ukraine. This is particularly dangerous given that Trump’s ill-considered actions have alienated many of the United States’ allies and supporters. This has created a favorable opportunity for China to take on a greater role in global leadership.

U.S. President Donald Trump needs to finally stop running the country like a reality show. America is a great country with a well-deserved reputation, which can be easily squandered by continuing to believe that Trump winning the Nobel Peace Prize is far more important than the historical fate of Ukraine or the future of a united Europe.

China and Russia must not be allowed to take advantage of the current realities in American politics to turn the U.S. into a large regional power whose leaders do not realize that the destruction of Euro-Atlantic unity only paves the way for the spread of totalitarian ideas across our planet.

International politics is much more than Donald Trump’s desire to be glorified as the best president of the United States during his lifetime. Russia, whatever it is called, the USSR or the Russian Federation, has always been the United States’s enemy. Therefore, one should not look for friends among one’s enemies, because there are none and there never can be.