Checks and balances on Vladimir Putin don’t come from inside Russia. The people around him supported forced mobilisation, pushed his plans to annex eastern Ukraine, and wanted more nuclear posturing. Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi, of China and India, can do a much better job at constraining Putin. They’re the only two leaders of major powers that haven’t completely ostracised the Russian leader. He needs them to keep his struggling economy afloat. The pair are putting pressure on the Putin to avoid nuclear conflict.

This morning, Xi warned Putin off using nukes for the first time, after saying in February that China and Russia’s friendship had ‘no limits’. In a joint press release with Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, Xi condemned ‘the use of, or threats to use, nuclear weapons’. That includes, then, the Russian talk of ‘tactical’ nukes.

The war was pretty much signed off by Xi. American intelligence says he dictated the date of the invasion, asking Putin to hold off until after the Beijing Winter Olympics. Putin no doubt told him that it would be a quick ‘special military operation’. Zelensky would be gone in days, and the Russian army would stroll into Kyiv. Xi instead watched a military disaster, it looked like he had backed a loser.

As the war has got worse for Putin, Xi and Modi’s warnings to him have become more public. They don’t want to be embarrassed further. In September, Modi told Putin that ‘now is not the time for war’. At a summit in Samarkand, in Uzbekistan, Putin told Xi that he understood his ‘concerns’ about the war.

Today’s statement is a diplomatic coup for Scholz, whose visit to China this week has been criticised. Macron is probably furious. There are parallels to Richard Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, when he widened a wedge between Mao Zedong’s China and the Soviet Union, preventing a united communist front. Some in the West may see Russia and China as one autocratic threat, but Germany’s acknowledgment of their differences might be smarter.

Scholz had a good hand to play in China. The Chinese state-owned Cosco has been granted a 25 per cent stake in Hamburg’s container port, for example. The EU is still China’s biggest economic partner too. They had bilateral trade worth around $828 billion last year, compared with $147 billion between Russia and China. As the US severs its ties with China more aggressively – see Joe Biden’s recent chip export ban – the European market will become even more important for Beijing.

China hasn’t condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That he ever would was wishful thinking. But Xi and Modi have now made clear that the use of nuclear weapons is a line that Putin must not cross. That’s good enough.

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