No way back [By Yang Yongliang/China.org.cn]

Russian President Vladimir Putin's first visit outside the former Soviet Union since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis will be to China, Shanghai to be precise. This is significant because Russia's relations with China are on the rise, in contrast to its relations with the West, which have deteriorated virtually to Cold War levels. Putin has even gone to extent of publicly praising Beijing's stance on the Ukraine crisis.

The Russians realize that the Chinese do not particularly like sudden border changes that impinge on territorial sovereignty, or great-power confrontations that can be disturbing to other countries. But they also appreciate that China abhors political interference resulting in regime changes even more. Thus, they see China's neutrality in the Ukraine crisis as a "plus" for them.

The evolving confrontation between Russia and the United States is being largely waged in the fields of economic sanctions and information warfare. US trade relations with Russia are fairly weak ($26 billion in bilateral trade in 2013), so Washington is pressing the European Union countries (with $370 billion in trade with Russia in 2013) to hit Russia hard.

The Europeans, so far, have balked at taking measures which would also hurt themselves, but they are also seeking ways to reduce their dependence on energy imports from Russia. China, in contrast, is a major economy which is essentially immune to US political pressure; it is also a growing energy market. Russia's trade with China ($88 billion) is less than that with the EU as a whole, but higher than with any one EU member state. Sooner rather than later, Gazprom will have to compromise on the price of its gas for China, but flexibility in the gas trade has its geopolitical and economic uses.

Putin's visit to China will coincide with the joint Sino-Russian naval exercises. These are held regularly, with the last being in the Sea of Japan off Vladivostok. This time, the venue is the East China Sea, where the territorial dispute between Beijing and Tokyo over the Diaoyu Islands(Senkaku Islands in Japanese) has heated up.