Sébastien Le Belzic 4:02 p.m., March 23, 2022
What is Russia going to do with all its oil and more broadly with all the goods it can no longer sell to Westerners?
Moscow already has a major ally: Beijing.
China is taking advantage of the conflict and the sanctions imposed on Russia to sign contracts to import Russian gas and oil.
China is already taking advantage of the situation in Ukraine.
Beijing has signed major Russian gas and oil import contracts worth several hundred billion dollars since the start of the conflict, in addition to those already signed since 2014 and the first sanctions against Moscow.
China comes in as a sanctions breaker
China has since doubled its purchases of Russian energy products and Gazprom will even build a new 900 kilometer gas pipeline between the two countries that can transport 50 billion cubic meters of gas per year, roughly the same volume as Nord Stream 2 in Europe.
China therefore arrives a bit like a sanctions breaker and even takes advantage of the situation by signing contracts in yuan, the Chinese currency which thus competes with the American dollar for the purchase of hydrocarbons.
This allows China to kill two birds with one stone by internationalizing its currency.
And for Russia, it's also a way to get foreign currencies that aren't US dollars.
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Increase in Russian wheat imports
Russian exports are not limited to hydrocarbons alone, since China has increased its imports of Russian wheat.
And it works both ways as China's exports to Russia have soared 41% since the start of the year.