The State and Prospects of the Relations Between Russia and Western Countries Against the Background of the Ukrainian Crisis in the Focus of Chinese Socio-Political Expertise

The Russian-Ukrainian conflict is the most serious crisis in international relations since the Cold War. This is not only a turning point in Russian-Ukrainian relations, but also a deep crisis in Russian-Western relations, which marked a change in Moscow’s approach to relations with the West, and the transition from past dialogue to today’s struggle. China, as a third party in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, took a neutral position from the very beginning, and ignored any requests from the United States and the West to somehow influence Russia. China’s position has increasingly attracted the attention of the Western media, and Beijing has begun to receive accusations from the West of supporting Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. This paper analyzes the articles published by Chinese academic experts on the media, and analyzes the content of Chinese popular media websites, such as CCTV News The Paper, Guanchazhe for the period from April 1, 2022 to December 1, 2022. In the course of the study, the authors come to the conclusion that the Chinese media mostly cover the events in Ukraine in a neutral way, they try to balance and not criticize Moscow when it comes to Russian-Western relations. Chinese experts have different views and thoughts when talking about the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and Russian-Western relations. Some Chinese analysts talked about Russia’s victory over the West, while others believe that Russia may end up with nothing. The authors concludes that the West and Russia may fall into a new Cold War, and this Cold War may turn out to be even more brutal than the last one for three main reasons: because of the all-encompassing military confrontation, because of economic isolation, and because of breakdown of humanitarian ties.