Subtle. Very subtle...and there is nothing Russia can do about it given it's increasingly precarious position. Sell at cost (or at a loss) to keep the wheels greased in the East while ceding territory in the West. Such is the power of a defacto monarchy - you can ignore market signals (both financial and political) so long as the local populace is controlled.
One wonders If Ukraine has a plan to retaliate for Russia's targeting of water supplies. Either direct action (eliminating potable reservoirs/distribution systems) or indirect (attacking arable land/farming concerns)...but unlike the movie (the screenpic above) "Red Dawn", it appears unlikely that Russia will have any ability to capture land as a countermeasure.
Four years of war and economic isolation have reduced the Russian president to a supplicant in a relationship growing more imbalanced -- and at times tense.
Before Putin made his 14th trip to meet with Xi in China, he publicly signaled that the two countries would strike a breakthrough agreement on energy. Indeed, his May visit had no bigger ambition than persuading Xi to greenlight a second natural-gas pipeline between Russia and China -- known as the Power of Siberia 2, a project two decades in the making that Moscow desperately needs.
But the Russian delegation that flew to Beijing ahead of Putin ran into a brick wall. Chinese officials made it clear to the visiting head of Gazprom, Russia's state-owned gas giant, that they would sign up to the pipeline only if Russia sold them gas at the same lower-than-market rate Moscow sells domestically, said people with knowledge of the talks. In essence, Beijing was asking the Kremlin to subsidize the project.
Driving home their point, Beijing's officials told the Russians not to raise the issue again until the terms changed, the people said.
A day later, Putin left the Chinese capital having signed 42 agreements and joint declarations. The pipeline deal wasn't among them. Beijing offered no public explanation.
"Xi received Putin like an emperor receiving his visitor in his castle," said Joerg Wuttke, a veteran German business executive with long experience in China-Russia relations, "and sent him home."
