“I recently spent 7 years living in Russia and was the acquaintance of a very high level person in the Foreign Office who reported at the senior level. One time I was invite to his Dacha for sashlick. On that visit I pointed out to him that during the Song Dynasty, China controlled a large part of the Russian Far East (i.e., 500 years before Ivan the Terrible was born) I told him, how long do you think it would take for Mr. Xi to find the map and claim the Russian Far East for China. I will not tell you what he told me-off the record. Leave it to suffice that if Russia did not have nuclear weapons, the people in Vladivistok would be speaking Chinese. Perhaps we should be making a security agreement with China, which would be one up on the one Mr. Xi made with Volodya.”
(Source: Reader comment re: Covid, Russia and Economy Put the ‘China Model’ to the Test)