For Europe, China’s close ties with Russia and perceived support for its war effort have overshadowed ties between China and Europe for more than three years. In Beijing, European Council President António Costa told his counterparts that China should “use its influence on Russia to respect the United Nations Charter and to bring an end of its war of aggression against Ukraine.

As US President Donald Trump holds talks with Ukraine’s President, China’s leaders see something very different: Opportunity. CNN’s Will Ripley reports.

Most significantly, China’s influence has recently shifted from passive supply to active manipulation of the technological balance on the battlefield—the hallmark of a state engaged in proxy warfare. In May 2025, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated bluntly, “Chinese Mavic [drones] are open for Russians but are closed for Ukrainians.”

The Alaska summit between President Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, was more than a high-stakes encounter over the Ukraine war. It signaled America’s recognition that its own missteps have helped drive Russia closer to China, fueling a de facto alliance that poses the gravest threat to U.S. global preeminence since the Cold War.

Political messages don’t get much blunter than the Russian missiles that slammed into an American-owned manufacturing firm overnight Wednesday in western Ukraine, hundreds of miles away from the frontline trenches of a war with no end in sight.

Trump is due to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders at the White House on Monday, August 18, to press Kyiv to make a deal with Russia, which is demanding that land be ceded to Moscow.

The Russians, as Trump realizes, want Ukraine as a demilitarized, deradicalized neutral state with no connection to NATO. They can only get that on the battlefield and they will continue until they do.

For a few years now, Western observers have breathlessly praised Ukraine’s successes in defense innovation, from AI to drones to decentralization and an

Ukraine does not consider China a possible security guarantor after the war, since such guarantees can only be given by countries that are actually helping, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters on August 20.