@samuelszuchan: Russia sells China the contents of its ground. China sells Russia the cars its citizens drive. This is not a new pattern. It's an eight-hundred-year-old one. Oil and gas accounted for 30 percent of Russia's total federal budget revenue in 2024, with oil-related taxes reaching 9.19 trillion rubles, about 89.4 billion dollars. Russia's main exports to China are raw materials: timber, crude oil, and other fossil fuels. Now look at the other side of the ledger. Between 2022 and 2024, the share of Chinese products in Russia's total imports jumped from 23% to 57%. Chinese car brands now account for 63% of the Russian market. Domestic Russian brands have fallen to 29%. Military historian Sarah Paine called this the legacy of the Mongol period. She said the Russian elites became tax collectors for the Mongols, an extractive role that has endured. Eight hundred years ago, Russian princes collected tribute from their own people and passed it up to the Mongol Khan. Today, Putin is dumping all of his ordnance on Ukraine while leaving Siberia, the resource-rich eastern flank, thinly populated and structurally dependent on a neighbor with 110 million people on the southern bank of the Amur. Paine's assessment: if he keeps the game up, he may well wind up with a Chinese yoke. A new yoke is a different word for the same job, with a different employer.

Sam Szuchan

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Saturday 13 June 2026 22:00:00 GMT