The Financial Times has published an article by Alexandra Prokopenko, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, who warns her readers that there is danger looming for the West’s financial interests in the upcoming Putin-Xi summit. “They will privately brainstorm options for a sanctions-proof infrastructure before quietly implementing them,” she frets.
Prokopenko begins with what she considers very bad news: Putin’s “new defense minister, Andrey Belousov, is an economist with deep ties to the Chinese leadership.” Furthermore, “over the past two years, the Russian and Chinese governments have demonstrated a remarkable ability to adapt to U.S. restrictions…. The next step for Moscow and Beijing, therefore, will be the creation of sophisticated infrastructure for clearing the most sensitive payments. This is unlikely to include any major Chinese bank integrated into the global financial system but some of its 4,500 regional banks already have correspondent relationships with Russian banks.”
