Why do Western leaders, pundits and academics all continue to despise the remarkable progress in economic and strategic cooperation being made between Russia and China and with their neighbors?

In the past six years, Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China met each other for sustained conferences on no less than 30 occasions.

President Xi paid a state visit to Russia from June 5 to June 7 where he and President Putin held bilateral talks which resulted in the two leaders signing an agreement to step up global strategic stability in the modern-era. Then from June 8 to June 10, both leaders also attended the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).

There was nothing sinister or secret about these meetings. On the contrary, they were extensively covered in the Russian and Chinese media. And they celebrated major advances in the growing cooperation two of the largest and most powerful nations in the world.

The trade volume between Russia and China is expected to continue to accelerate and reach new heights, doubling the current record level of $108 billion, the Russian economy ministry said.

Trade between Russia and China in agricultural products and processed food alone rose by nearly 30 percent in 2018 to over $5 billion. Overall bilateral trade volume is now at $108 billion, a rise of 25 percent in only one year and looks to rise even faster.

The significance in these developments to the global balance of power and patterns of investment and trade is very clear. Russia is fast becoming a food exporting superpower likely to reach a level it has not experienced since before World War I.

Already, Russia succeeds in selling wheat at a profit more cheaply and cost effectively to Indonesia than Australia, Jakarta’s next door neighbor.

The economic sanctions slammed on Russia by the United States and the European Union (EU) nations and Canada after Crimea and the two eastern provinces of Donetsk and Lugansk opted out of Ukraine following the Maidan coup in 2014 have backfired spectacularly.

They were meant to force Russia to its knees and bully it into accepting the ongoing neo-colonization of Eurasia by Washington, Wall Street, London and Brussels. Russia was meant to accept the diktat of the Kiev coup d’état and many more or face being plunged back into the hellish starvation of the 1990s……more here