How Did the Ukraine War Change Putin's "Turn to the East"?

Abstract:Expectations that the Ukraine war would revitalize Vladimir Putin's "Turn to the East" were not realized. He had sought to link Ukraine and Taiwan in a struggle for a new order. If Xi Jinping's "Beijing straddle" countered the Washington-led international order, it mostly complied with Western sanctions. Russia had claimed to be the coequal driver of the reordering of the East, but a war presumed to raise its stature in China had the opposite effect. The "Turn to the East" shifted further to a "turn toward China," and Xi determines the timing of the East-West confrontation. The war, coupled with anger over the victory of Yoon Suk-yeol, tilted Moscow further to North Korea over South Korea. Japan finally pulled the plug on Shinzo Abe's legacy of wooing Putin. Russia's turn to China played poorly in India, too, although it clung to cooperation in part to restrain a further shift. Even Russian hopes for ASEAN were set back. The war's impact in the East defied Putin's intentions.