TWO VISITS FROM THE EAST: PUTIN AND XI

Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin touched down in Crimea to celebrate five years since Moscow seized the peninsula from Ukraine. Later this week, Chinese President Xi Jinping will travel to Europe, where Italy is expected to sign on to Beijing's trillion-dollar Belt and Road global infrastructure plan.

Our thought bubble: Each of these visits speaks to a different way that the world order – once dominated, for better or for worse, by the Euro-Atlantic "West" – is now rapidly shifting.

Russia tearing things down: Back in 2014, President Putin justified the annexation of Crimea by rattling off 20 years worth of grievances with the West, finishing with this warning: "if you compress a spring to its limit, it will snap back hard." Russia in the years since has been in snapback mode – keen to defend what it sees Moscow's sphere of influence (Ukraine), force the US to reckon with Moscow as a global player again (Syria), and to accelerate the political fragmentation of the West along nationalist/populist lines (using its cyber capacity to exacerbate underlying social and political polarization in Europe and the US).

China building things up: But where Russia is concerned primarily with accelerating the decline of an old order, China is looking to create a new one of its own – building new Chinese-led global financial structures, exporting Chinese technological standards and norms, particularly in the development of 5G, and broadening economic and trade relationships left to languish by a less trade-friendly US. Critics worry that Chinese loans will create debt traps, or that Chinese technology companies will muscle out Western competitors while creating national security liabilities. But dozens of countries are eager to tap into lavish Chinese financing for much-needed infrastructure, and to gain better access to that billion-strong export market.

The Belt and Road initiative, which already includes some 80 countries, is a centerpiece of President Xi Jinping's plan for China to "take center stage in the world." Until now, the that strategy has focused primarily on Africa, Asia, Latin America, and smaller countries on Europe's fringes – but if Italy signs on, it would be the first G7 country to join. That would mark a major new milestone in Beijing's global rise.

The big picture: US President Donald Trump has certainly upended long-standing assumptions about American support for a certain kind of global order. But that's only part of a much larger story in which a rising China and a rankled Russia are challenging and remaking the international landscape. In sum: it ain't all Trump.

More from GZERO Media

A girl is inoculated against the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) during a vaccination event hosted by Miami-Dade County and Miami Heat, at FTX Arena in Miami, Florida, USA, on August 5, 2021.
REUTERS/Marco Bello/File Photo

Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo’s plan to repeal childhood vaccine mandates in the state’s public schools has prompted further debate over shots, states’ rights, and medical freedoms.

The body of Israeli Levi Itzhak Pash, who was killed when Palestinian gunmen opened fire at a bus stop at the outskirts of Jerusalem, is transported on the day of his funeral procession in Jerusalem September 8, 2025.
REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

A group of terrorists from the West Bank opened fire on civilians at a major junction in Jerusalem on Monday morning, killing at least six people and injuring another 21.

- YouTube

Siddhartha Mukherjee explains how AI is designing entirely new medicines—molecules that may have never existed—by learning the rules of chemistry and generating drugs with unprecedented speed and precision.

Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage gestures as he attends the party's national conference at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, United Kingdom, on September 5, 2025.
REUTERS/Isabel Infantes

Right-wing populist parties are now, for the first time, leading the polls in Europe’s three largest economies.