The two major Chinese and American economies are facing, why is Russia, located on the Asian and European continent, the first to express the regret that it can not be survived?
According to Russian media reports, U.S. President Trump recently spoke in an interview. "The United States is engaged in a trade war with China."
Immediately afterwards, Kremlin Press Secretary Peskov issued a warning in response to a reporter's question, Said that "the Sino-US trade war will inevitably affect the whole world economy".
The whole world, as Peskov said, naturally includes Russia.Why does Peskov, as Putin’s neighbor, express such a grievance?Why does Russia want to maintain a balance between China and the United States, and why is it becoming increasingly difficult to?
To understand Russia's anxiety, we first need to see clearly the triangular balance pattern before the escalation of the Sino-US trade war.
In the first half of 2025, Russia maintained a subtle strategic buffer between China and the United States:
Due to the continued depletion of the Ukraine crisis, the United States had to continue its cooperation with Russia in some fields, and even acquiesced in Russia's partial energy trade through the "shadow fleet";
Out of the need for scientific and technological cooperation, China is deeply bound with Russia in the field of artificial intelligence. The innovation agreement signed by the Russian Savings Bank and Tsinghua University is a concrete embodiment of this collaboration.
This state of "the United States needs Russia's compromise and China needs Russia's cooperation" has enabled Russia to find vitality in the gaps of Western sanctions, and even showed signs of a slight economic recovery.
But the trade war actively ignited by the Trump administration is fundamentally tearing this balance apart.
For Russia, the first is the sharp increase in pressure on cooperation with China.China, in response to the threat of U.S. tariffs, has made it clear that rare-earth export controls are important.
Russia, on the one hand, wants to do rare-earth business with the United States to ease tensions with the Trump administration; on the other hand, it also needs to take the scale in cooperation and avoid affecting China-Russia mutual trust.
At this time, the "easing bait" thrown by the United States put Russia in a dilemma.
The Trump administration has waved tariffs on China, while suggesting through diplomatic channels that if Russia remains consistent with the United States on trade issues, it could consider easing some of the sanctions on Russia, including unfreezing some of Russia’s assets in the United States.
For Russia, which is suffering from Western sanctions, this temptation is not insignificant.
But Russia is well aware that accepting the terms of the United States means paying the price of alienating China- In 2024, the trade volume between China and Russia has exceeded US $240 billion, and China has been Russia's largest trading partner for 14 consecutive years. The weight of this market is far beyond the partial concessions of the United States.
The American Soybean Association's recent move to put pressure on Trump to relax exports to China has made Russia see clearly the swinging nature of US policy, and the risk of rashly betting is extremely high.
From this perspective, Peskov's statement is essentially a clear understanding of the risk of "being trapped".
Russia is well aware of its strategic shortcomings: there are not enough economies independent of China and the United States, and there are no effective alternatives to China and the United States.
After all, China and the United States together account for more than 40% of global GDP, and no major economy can truly isolate the spillover effects of their trade games.
As Russian economists said, in today's highly intertwined global industrial chains, "there are no bystanders in any conflict between major powers".
During the China-U.S. trade war in 2018, Russia was able to profit by expanding exports of agricultural products to China, but now the EU sanctions have greatly damaged the Russian agricultural industry chain.
More importantly, the Russian science and technology industry has been deeply embedded in the global industrial chain dominated by China and the United States, from semiconductor components to industrial software, it is difficult to complete replacement in the short term, and the supply chain rupture caused by the trade war will directly affect Russian people's livelihoods and military-industrial production.
Peskov’s “cannot survive” is both an openness to economic reality and a relentlessness to the strategic situation.
Russia neither wants to get involved in the trade confrontation between China and the United States, nor has to face the pressure of the “selection stands”, this passive situation is the typical trouble in the game of great powers, secondary economies.
This trade war has also made it clear to the world that Sino-US relations are no longer a simple "zero-sum game".
Russia’s encounters confirm the logic of globalization of “a loss”: The U.S. attempt to contain China through a trade war could aggravate the global supply chain, while China will always insist on defending its own rights and interests and fighting for peace in this trade game.
For Russia, the most realistic option remains to consolidate the basis of strategic cooperation between China and Russia.At the same time, expanding “de-camping” cooperation through platforms such as the SCO may be its only way to stay strong in the swirling of a trade war.