Chinese President Xi Jinping was “considering taking over Taiwan in the fall” of this year as “he needs his own little victory to get re-elected for a third term” given the “colossal struggle” within the Chinese Communist Party’s elites, revealed a letter published on Facebook by the Russian dissident Vladimir Osechkin, a human rights lawyer who runs a human rights website Gulagu Net.

Osechkin claimed that letter was from an intelligence officer from an analytical unit of the FSB (Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation).

However, the letter claimed, “after the Ukrainian events, this window of opportunity has been closed to [Xi Jinping]” which now gives “United States the opportunity to both blackmail Xi and negotiate with its competitors on favourable terms.”

As per the letter, China is getting increasingly concerned as the “the cost of resources in the world, especially energy ones, has gone up” as the Asian dragon is the main victim of these circumstances. China has behaved tolerant towards the Russian operations in Ukraine because it was “given guarantees that everything will end quickly” which doesn’t seem to be the case now.

On the other, the whistleblower FSB analyst explained, in US there is “a certain internal balance” because “the owners of the industry and the oil industry are basically the same corporations” which gives it room for manoeuvre with respect to energy supplies and raw materials.

Moreover, “United States will come to an agreement with Venezuela and Iran” and “it was preparing for such negotiations in advance”. China doesn’t have the same setup or the bandwidth. Therefore, “China may well give [Russians] a tough ultimatum to end the war to stabilise oil prices.”

Given Russia’s “negative image for a number of countries because of the war” it will not be difficult for the US to “sell sanctions against China at least to Europeans if it risks bypassing sanctions against Russia.”

Such sanctions would be a “near-fatal blow” because they would put China into a doubly vulnerable position given the fact it is hugely dependent on its exports which in turn are dependent on the rising raw material prices. The Russian source of the letter, hence, contends “that we launched a trap mechanism for China with our actions” in Ukraine.

On the authenticity of the letter, Christo Grozev, a Bulgarian journalist who won the European Press Prize for Investigative Journalism, in a series of tweets vouched for Vladimir Osechkin as a reputable source. He further argued that “the longer the text, the more risk of making an error” which points to the authenticity of the letter.

In the same tweet thread, Grozev explained that while his two confirmed FSB contacts did not agree with all of the analyst’s conclusions, they “had no doubt it was written by a colleague”.

Investigative Journalism

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