Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Say the west stops buying russian goods including oil and gas will China buy it?

Will the west cease trade with China?

Putin probably has a fair idea about the answer to those questions and placed his bet...

The west is at a weak point. The us seems to have some troublesome internal divisions, combined with the recent history of endless wars based on false intelligence/lies. Afghanistan in particular ended badly.

Europe on the other hand has divisions among countries in regards to even sanctions. It also isn't a single military entity - that matters to someone like putin. (I'm not arguing for Ireland to join NATO or for an eu army etc, just pointing it out)

Its seems the west needs to be able to follow through with serious sanctions with the possibility of it impacting trade on China or the west needs to admit defeat.

An alternative is to play the Russians at their own game with unmarked "rebel" forces with some heavy duty anti tank and anti air weaponry. Remember the Russian aligned rebels turned up with tanks and artillery etc. Personally I do not see that high risk strategy happening. For that to work the west would need to have already deployed them and to basically be broadcasting it to Russian as a warning.

Other high risk alternative would be to open Pandora's box and assassinate putin. But you could see endless tit for tat assassinations among world leaders. Again pie in the sky stuff but those are the options.

Probably the west will announce weak sanctions and carry on.

The risk here is a serious testing of NATO in some form or another possibly through "rebel" forces in an eastern European country. Who would risk nuclear war over a hazy incident? What if rebels took part of a NATO member bordering Russia with Russian denials? Create the same scenario as eastern Ukraine and x years later just declare that you recognise the new state. This time play it safe and do not send in peacekeepers. If NATO fights the rebels so be it. NATO passes the test. If NATO is too afraid to take on the rebels then NATO is over.

Putins age may hasten this

I think the Russia China alliance thing is probably over played. I don’t think the Chinese particularly need the Russians nor will they want to get into a mess with a quite belligerent neighbour with a fairly unsophisticated energy economy. China is all about needing to trade. It’s a very different economy.

Also historically Chinese Russian relations have been politely frosty. I wouldn’t really get the impression they see eye to eye on many issues. The US tends to just see “commies” but in reality neither of them really are that anymore. China is some kind of statist, communist/capitalist/socialist authoritarian hybrid. Russia is just basically authoritarian capitalist these days.

Other than natural resources, I can’t really see what China would get from this. It’s not like China is in anyway short of technology these days and other than some narrow military tech, which I would suspect China has more than enough technical capabilities to exceed at this stage, I can’t really see what Russia has to offer other than gas/oil. China would have a lot more to lose too in anything that caused major instability or drew trade sanctions. It’s just a vastly more sophisticated and complex trading economy that’s very heavily globalised. Russia really is the polar opposite - natural resources / energy and that’s about it.