For all Chinese President Xi Jinping’s declarations of support for Russia during his state visit to Moscow, China’s real motive in seeking closer ties is evidently to exploit the Ukraine conflict to test its military firepower.

Just as Iran has used Ukraine’s brutal war to test the effectiveness of its drone and missile technology, so China’s emerging industrial-military complex is reportedly looking for opportunities to conduct a rigorous evaluation of its new weapons systems; Chinese arms manufacturers are reportedly keen to test the effectiveness of their new weapons systems in Ukraine.

A year after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s military, having lost an estimated 200,000 men and around 90 percent of its heavy armour, including around 50 percent of its pre-invasion tank fleet, finds itself in a dire predicament.

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The scale of the losses has forced the Russians to pull 1950s-era T-54 and T-55 tanks out of storage for use in the Ukrainian conflict, a clear sign that Russian forces are suffering a serious shortage of heavy armour.

Read more: Gatestone Institute