Putin's alleged friend Xi Zinping

Vladimir Putin went to Uzbekistan to meet with Xi Zinping and came away with....nothing much. The Chinese leader, as enigmatic as ever, called Putin his old friend and Putin called President Xi his dear friend. But apart from that, Putin got very little. He got no support for his war in Ukraine and even had to acknowledge in public that his Chinese friend had concerns about what was going on in Ukraine. You bet Xi has concerns. It would have been all right if Putin had done what he promised Xi at the Winter Olympics he would do which was to invade Ukraine and subjugate the whole country in days. Xi could have put up with that, especially since Putin had always been so supportive about China's plan to grab Taiwan. But not only has Putin failed to subjugate Ukraine but he provoked the hated western alliance into arming the Kyiv government with missiles, rockets and artillery that have forced his troops to run or surrender. Putin and Xi share their dislike of everything western especially democracy and human rights values but the Chinese leader has to do business with the US and others because in this globalised world Beijing has little other choice. Whereas Russia is now isolated from most of the world and its economy is going to be so badly damaged by the war and western sanctions that Xi might think there's not much point in allying himself to the pugnacious Putin for much longer. Sergey Lavrov, the so-called Russian foreign minister, claimed the talks in Uzbekistan had gone really well and the two leaders were of like mind about everything but it is patently not true. Xi doesn't want the embarrassment of helping his "old friend" while the war in Ukraine continues and certainly won't give him weapons to finish it off. So Putin returned to Moscow with empty hands and empty pockets. The "old friend" nomenclature might not last much longer.