China has dropped all pretense of neutrality in Russia’s war with Ukraine, having been revealed as the main supplier of components for Russia’s Shahed strike drones and ballistic missiles pummeling Ukrainian cities over recent nights.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told senior European diplomats last week that China “cannot accept a defeat of Russia” as NATO analysts dissecting unexploded Shaheds discovered that the transmitters, signal generators, and other key parts of Russia’s prime killer drone come from the Institute for Microelectronics Technology in Beijing.

Record waves of over 500 Shaheds, which the Russians have renamed Geranium 2, enhancing Iran’s original model with faster Chinese engines and bigger explosive loads, have been swarming over Ukraine on a nightly basis. The commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, warned this week that the swarms could grow to 1,000 “Geraniums” per day in the coming weeks and months.

Russia has built factories to produce millions of Shaheds, using North Korean slave labor sent by Kim Jong Un as part of his “military industrial agreements” with Putin that have also included the dispatch of tens of thousands of combat troops.

Last week’s pause in the U.S. transfer of Patriot missiles and other air defense systems to Ukraine could not have come at a worst moment. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that the Pentagon needed to prioritize the resupply of forces in the Pacific theater to prepare for possible conflict with China over Taiwan.

But Wang’s candid remarks to EU Commissioner for External Affairs Kaja Kallas last week indicate that the war in Ukraine is inextricably linked with any conflict that may erupt with China in the Far East.

Beijing also supplies technology for Russia’s growing ballistic missile program, which has tripled production over the past year, despite Western economic sanctions aimed at blocking the acquisition of tooling equipment for Russian missile factories.

While Russia used its ballistic missiles sparingly in previous years, they are now launched regularly at a rate of about one for every 10 Shaheds, whose swarms deflect air defenses, clearing space for missiles to fall on target with growing precision.

Imported equipment for Russia’s expanded missile program comes “primarily from mainland China,” according to an investigation by the Kyiv Independent. Of 10 contracts reviewed by the newspaper, eight involved products supplied by China to the Votkinsk Plant producing the Iskander-M ballistic missile whose use has multiplied. “As production at the plant grows so do the attacks,” according to Kyiv Independent, which cites Ukrainian military intelligence estimates indicating that Russia’s stockpile of Iskanders has grown to about 1,000.

Chinese companies supplying Votkinsk include the Tianjin International Trading Company, which provides titanium products necessary for aerodynamic rudders and engine combustion chambers; the Zhangzhou Donggang Precision Machinery Company, which supplies milling equipment; and the WMT CNC Industrial Co., which provides special metal strengthening lathe.

North Korea has supplied Russia with about 150 KN-23 ballistic missiles whose precision has been perfected by Russian engineers and used to strike Kyiv. But Pyongyang’s key contribution has been the supply of millions of cannon rounds, allowing Russia to maintain a steady five to one advantage in artillery fire over Ukraine.

Europe’s NATO partners can’t make up Ukraine’s shortfall because they lack TNT. Only one plant in Poland currently produces the high explosive needed for artillery rounds. Production was largely outsourced to countries outside the eurozone, including China, due to pressures from the Green lobby whose environmental guidelines were adopted by Ursula von der Leyen, the former German defense minister and current president of the European Commission.

While plans are underway to rebuild TNT plants under Europe’s newly announced $800 billion rearmament program, few are likely to be in operation before 2028.

Much of Ukraine could be overrun by then. Putin announced Russia’s complete control of the region of Luhansk last week. Neighboring Donetsk should be next, although Russian advances appear stalled by unexpectedly heavy resistance from dug-in Ukrainian forces blocking pincer movements on the industrial cities of Kostiantynivka, Slovyansk, and Kramatorsk.

Ukraine’s increasingly precise strikes on Russian command centers, ammunition depots, and supply lines using U.S.-made precision-guided bombs, European cruise missiles, and domestically produced long-range drones may be blunting Putin’s summer offensive.

Ukrainian frontline officers report that encirclements of their position are increasingly conducted by Russian light infantry or “Motorized Rifles” mounted on motorbikes and buggies powered by silent electrical engines made in China.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte warned last week that “it’s in China’s interest to keep the war in Ukraine going for as long as possible” even without an outright Russian victory. He went so far as to say in an interview with the New York Times that China’s regime would consult Putin prior to invading Taiwan to coordinate offensive moves, possibly by asking for a Russian attack on NATO to prevent Western forces from concentrating on the Indo-Pacific.

It’s questionable whether Putin would risk thermonuclear confrontation to please China’s politburo. He did nothing to help Iran against Israeli and U.S. airstrikes despite the key assistance that the Iranians gave his air war on Ukraine with their Shahed technology.

But Beijing’s unconditional support for Putin’s conquest of Ukraine, which runs counter to previous assumptions about Chinese policy on the war, diminishes Putin’s incentive to negotiate a peace agreement with Kyiv. This has become evident in recent days marked by Putin’s stepped-up missile attacks on Kyiv, abandonment of peace talks in Istanbul, and phone conversations with President Donald Trump which have left him “very unhappy.”

Russia might be reincentivized to seek peace if NATO threatens a new front along its southern underbelly of long and porous borders with restive and hostile Muslim neighbors. Last week, Azerbaijan, which formed part of the former Soviet Union, shut down offices of Russia’s state-owned Sputnik news agency, accusing its staff of being undercover agents for the FSB.

Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, banned the teaching of Russian in schools and ordered arrests of members of the Russian business community. The anti-Russian purge is a culmination of long-brewing ethnic tensions that led Russian police to summarily execute two Azerbaijanis during a criminal roundup in the city of Yekaterinburg some days earlier.

A close aide to Aliyev called on Turkey to establish a NATO base in the country as Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan flew to meet with Aliyev, who has been expanding military cooperation with Turkey since a 2020 war with Russian-backed Armenia.

The Kremlin is worried. Russia’s foreign ministry issued a statement accusing “external forces” of trying to “drive a wedge between Russia and Azerbaijan” whose relationship it called “strategic.” The foreign ministry further said that “we must not allow this to happen” and that “it is time to make peace.”

The Trump administration has been implementing highly creative and proactive policies in the Muslim world, destroying the nuclear capability of the Russian-aligned regime of Iran while cultivating ties with moderate Arab kingdoms and the new Islamic republic in Syria backed by Turkey. Pursuing such policies to pressure Russia along its sensitive Central Asian borders may help leverage Putin back to the negotiating table on and away from China.