China has until now taken a largely “stick fingers in ears, hum real loud” approach to the Russia/Ukraine situation. And their reasoning is obvious: what Russia is doing to Ukraine, China wants to do to Taiwan. If Russia got away with it, China would doubtless launch their own invasion, secure in the knowledge that they too would be allowed to get away with it.

But Russia is having more difficulty than Putin seemed to expect. Not only are the Ukrainians putting up a lot more of a fight than expected (and the Russian military demonstrating a hell of a lot of incompetency), the world is laying an economic beatdown on Russia. This probably surprised the Russian leadership… and it’s clearly spooking the Chinese leadership. The sort of sanctions that are crippling the Russian economy would cause the Chinese economy to implode. And who knows? Perhaps the Chinese people would actually turn on their government. Can’t have that. And thus we get:

Russia says China refuses to supply aircraft parts after sanctions

It’s starting to look like China might be starting to side *against* the Russians, doubtless as a way to deflect attention and potential sanctions away from themselves. What’s ChiCom for “you’re on your own?”

And at the same time that Russia is finding it’s list of allies growing thin, they’re working to assure that nobody will ever do business with them again:

Russia draft law raises doubt over fate of $10 bln of jets

The Russian civil aviation industry has leased five hundred and some airliners from the likes of foreign companies Airbus and Boeing. Those foreign companies now want their airplanes back. The Russian government is proposing to effectively nationalize those aircraft… to steal them for the state. Great. So now you have yourself some free airliners. Good luck getting maintenance or replacement parts. Good luck getting new airliners in the future. Pretty sure *nobody* would be dumb enough to lease or rent you anything you could walk off with. Boeing and Airbus might be willing to outright sell you new airplanes… but likely only after you’ve paid for the ones you stole, plus interest.

Good job, morons.