This is John Batcher, conversation with George Friedman.

My colleague, he is the founder and chairman of Geopolitical Futures,

about Vladimir Putin's recent embassy to Beijing.

What did he want from Shijin Ping?

Did he get it? No.

Did it involve Taiwan?

Yes. This is George Freeman to explain what

Vladimir Putin seeks in order to resolve the conflict in Ukraine in order to strengthen the

alliance if that's what it is between Beijing and Moscow more of this tonight thank

you what Putin wanted he didn't think he'd get it, but he was going to try, was the Chinese doing something like in the against Taiwan, and thereby forcing the Americans to send half of their

tonnage of weapons elsewhere.

In other words, to weaken them. And there was, last week, a large

Chinese Fotilla around Taiwan, and stayed there but they didn't fight. The Chinese

don't underestimate the Americans at all. They are very careful not to push them too far and they're not going to join the Russians in this

and the Russians badly need the American attention to be somewhere else away from Ukraine. And I think that's why he went to China. He went to China to say,

look, this is our chance to split the Americans and hand them a serious defeat.

You've got to cooperate.

China had no confidence in that idea,

and he went home with only a little demonstration

to show for it.