Novorossiya for Xi: How China is Penetrating Donbas
In the occupied territory of Ukraine, 6,000 mobile phone base stations operate on Chinese equipment, according to a March report by the Eastern Human Rights Group. Around 80 bank branches in the Donbas sell yuan in cash. The exchange of delegations at the grassroots level and cautious cooperation with Chinese corporations based on “import substitution” are taking place against the backdrop of Beijing’s careful circumvention of sanctions, which has never officially recognized the occupation of Crimea, the “independent republics of the LPR and DPR,” or their incorporation into Russia. Meanwhile, Luhansk enterprises are preparing for a May fair in Harbin, and in January, a delegation from the Kherson region visited China to “establish long-term cooperation.” Gradually and deliberately, China is quietly penetrating and gaining a foothold in occupied Ukraine.
Beijing’s Crimean bridgehead
Chinese investors expressed interest in doing business in Crimea even before Russia’s annexation of the peninsula in 2014. In December 2013, the Ukrainian government, then headed by Mykola Azarov, and the Chinese private company Beijing Interoceanic Canal Investment Management Co. Ltd. signed a memorandum of economic cooperation. This Chinese company, owned by multimillionaire Wang Jin, is known for its ambitious project to build a shipping canal in Nicaragua, which was intended to compete with the Panama Canal and advance Chinese geopolitical interests.
The Ukrainian-Chinese project included the construction of a deep-water port in Crimea and Chinese participation in the reconstruction of the fishing port in Sevastopol. The first phase of investment was expected to amount to $3 billion. Wang Jing, owner of Beijing Interoceanic Canal Investment Management Co. Ltd., stated that this project would transform Crimea “into an economic and transport hub of the Maritime Silk Road.”
Even then, some Ukrainian experts believed this was the first step in a large-scale expansion: first a port in Crimea, then the leasing of agricultural land in the south of the country, and the end result would be Ukraine becoming an agricultural appendage of China. Crimean environmentalists also opposed the project. For President Yanukovych, cooperation with China was an attempt to attract money to Ukraine from any source, amid the Maidan protests against the rollback of European integration that had already begun.
Subsequent events—the Maidan standoff, Yanukovych’s flight to Russia, and Russia’s intervention in Crimea—put an end to this large-scale undertaking. In June 2014, Beijing Interoceanic Canal Investment Management Co. Ltd. announced that it was no longer pursuing any projects in Crimea. Attempts to attract Chinese investors for the construction of the Kerch Bridge also ended in failure.
This was logical, as the annexation of Crimea was not recognized by the international community (including China itself), and international sanctions were imposed against Russia. Between 2014 and 2022, Russian media periodically reported on Chinese companies’ willingness to participate in infrastructure projects on the annexed peninsula, but nothing came of it.
The situation began to change after 2022, when cooperation between Moscow and Beijing reached a new level. As early as November 2023, The Washington Post reported that Russia and China were negotiating the construction of a transport tunnel under the Kerch Strait (on July 17, 2023, the Ukrainian Armed Forces successfully attacked the Crimean Bridge with a surface drone). At the time, Moscow and Beijing unanimously denied the American publication’s report.
However, reports about the possible involvement of Chinese companies in infrastructure projects in Crimea began to appear with increasing frequency. In 2025, Ukrainian intelligence reported that the Crimean occupation authorities wanted to attract Chinese investment in the construction of the Kerch Seaport and the expansion of the military base on Lake Donuzlav. This was clearly done in circumvention of sanctions. In 2025, the Panamanian-flagged Heng Yang 9, owned by Guangxi Changhai Shipping, repeatedly entered the port of Sevastopol with its transponder turned off. The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs protested this to China.
Fearing secondary sanctions, China is reluctant to openly invest in the infrastructure of annexed Crimea. However, there are reports that Beijing is, at a minimum, extremely interested in the peninsula, and, at a maximum, is already secretly cooperating with Russia in the Black Sea.
There is information that, at a minimum, Beijing is extremely interested in the peninsula, and at a maximum, it is already secretly cooperating with Russia in the Black Sea area.
A report by the Extrema Ratio initiative (which tracks China’s global expansion) notes :
“China’s interest in the Black and Azov Seas goes beyond simply supporting Russia in Crimea, fitting into the broader strategy of the Belt and Road Initiative and opening up potential dual-use opportunities…
Any infrastructure development in these regions, even if nominally commercial or civilian, inherently supports and strengthens Russia’s military and logistical capabilities. This is consistent with China’s strategic partnership with Russia, especially given Russia’s growing dependence on China for critical military technologies and components following Western sanctions.”
A Chinese quarry and a Katyusha rocket in the ruins of Mariupol
In the summer of 2022, the “DPR” authorities began to show interest in the abandoned Karansky quarry near the village of Myrne in the Volnovakha district of Donetsk Oblast (before the start of the full-scale war, this was Ukrainian-controlled territory). The quarry had been used to extract crushed stone for construction; work had been inactive there since 2008. In August 2022, restoration of the processing plant began, and by October, the reopening of the Karansky quarry was officially announced.
In November 2023, the head of the occupation “government of the DPR,” Russian official Yevgeny Solntsev, announced that the Karan quarry had signed cooperation agreements with two Chinese companies—Amma Construction Machinery Co. Ltd. (a manufacturer of rock crushing equipment) and Zhongxin Heavy Industry Machinery Co., Ltd. (a manufacturer of crushing and screening equipment). The signing took place at the DPR representative office in Moscow.
In March 2025, Solntsev was transferred from Donbas to the Orenburg Region, where he assumed the governor’s post. However, cooperation with Chinese companies continued—locals began calling the Karan quarry “Chinese.” The crushed stone extracted from the quarry is used for construction throughout the occupied territory of Ukraine, where the Russian government, having destroyed everything, announced large-scale “restoration” projects.
The Ukrainian publication Realnaya Gazeta, which has employed journalists from Donbas since 2014 who were forced to flee their region due to the occupation, conducted its own investigation into the cooperation between the “DPR” authorities and Chinese companies. According to the publication, the companies named by Solntsev, Amma Construction Machinery Co. Ltd. and Zhongxin Heavy Industry Machinery Co., Ltd., are actively involved in Russia, specifically with the Kamensk Crushed Stone Plant in the Rostov Region.
The likely intermediary was Zhang Jingwei, a graduate student at Southern Federal University who develops defense technologies for the Russian military. For example, he was reported to have created an improved neural network model for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), allowing for faster detection of small objects in real time. Zhang Jingwei won the “Leaders of Russia” competition, overseen by First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Sergei Kiriyenko.
Andrey Dikhtyarenko, editor-in-chief of Realnaya Gazeta, told The Insider that this type of mediation demonstrates how China infiltrates occupied territories.
“Zhang Jingwei studies and works at Rostov University. He is also the head of the local Chinese community and acts as an intermediary between the DPR and Chinese firms from his home province. While official Chinese government agencies seem to be keeping a low profile—large state-owned corporations don’t want to be subject to sanctions—medium-sized private businesses are being given the go-ahead to organize joint projects in the occupied territories of Ukraine.”
Without overly publicizing their presence (if not for the vanity of local officials, these investments might go completely unnoticed), Chinese companies participate in infrastructure projects, supply equipment, and so on. According to Dikhtyarenko, the Donetsk quarry story is far from the only example of such cooperation.
For example, Chinese mining equipment is supplied to the Belorechenskaya mine in the Luhansk region. It is one of the few profitable mines in the occupied territory. “The restoration of industry in the occupied territory is already being carried out with Chinese funds; without China, Russia has no way to quickly restore all this,” the journalist explains.
According to Dikhtyarenko, this cooperation, in addition to its business component, also has a significant political one: “There’s an exchange of propagandist experiences. For example, employees of Luhansk propaganda media are actively encouraged to participate in study tours to China, where they are given tours of drone factories.”
As a counterexample, Dikhtyarenko cites the visit to Mariupol by Chinese blogger and singer Wang Fang in 2023: “Her official husband, however, did not go to Mariupol; he waited for his wife in Rostov, and then they held a joint press conference.” During her visit, Wang Fang sang “Katyusha” amid the ruins of the Mariupol Drama Theater, destroyed by a Russian airstrike. Her trip sparked a protest from the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
A collaboration with a Chinese accent
For the occupation authorities of the “DPR,” cooperation with China is an important element of strengthening their influence within the bureaucratic hierarchy through contacts with Chinese authorities, business ties, participation in business forums, and so on. In April 2024, “DPR” “Prime Minister” Yevgeny Solntsev attended the 1st Russian-Chinese Construction Forum in Harbin, organized by the All-Russian Center for National Construction Policy and the Harbin regional government.
“We discussed with colleagues the possibilities of launching and modernizing our metallurgical plants,” Solntsev said . He also announced cooperation with two Chinese construction companies: Genertec International Co Ltd and China Xinxing Group Co Ltd, in the “Donbas restoration” project (no official contracts were signed).
The occupation government of the Zaporizhzhia region is also making plans for cooperation with China. Acting Minister of Economic Development Yuriy Guskov stated : “The Zaporizhzhia region, as a new region of the Russian Federation, plans to actively cooperate with Chinese businesses. Our grain is of the highest quality, and Chinese consumers will definitely appreciate this. We will actively use public diplomacy to promote our products.”
True, this didn’t go beyond “people’s diplomacy.” However, another story is known : a cherry processing plant in Melitopol was nearly “squeezed” from a Chinese businessman. The company “Eurofruit” was founded in 2015 by Zheng Feng, an investor from Shanghai. However, after the region’s occupation, a local influential businessman, Sergei Zhelev, who collaborated with the Russian authorities, set his sights on the plant. The Chinese owner had to rush to Melitopol to protect his investment.
There’s room for curiosities, too. In July 2025, the “LPR” authorities reported on the visit of a delegation of Chinese investors. However, it soon became clear that these weren’t exactly Chinese. Or rather, not Chinese at all. The “investors from the Middle Kingdom” were presented as entrepreneurs from Voronezh—of Vietnamese and Azerbaijani descent.
In July 2025, the LPR authorities reported on the visit of a delegation of Chinese investors – they turned out to be entrepreneurs from Voronezh.
In July 2025, Russia’s Promsvyazbank (PSB) organized a trip to China for representatives of ten companies from the occupied territories of Ukraine (winners of the all-Russian competition for domestic producers, “Know Ours”). Promsvyazbank is an important element of the occupation structure. It was the first major Russian bank to open representative offices in the annexed Ukrainian regions—first in Crimea, then in the so-called “LPR-DPR” and the occupied parts of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts.
In 2018, PSB was nationalized and has since become the main lender to the Russian defense industry, servicing up to 70% of state defense contracts. The bank is headed by Pyotr Fradkov, the son of former Prime Minister and former head of foreign intelligence Mikhail Fradkov. Since 2022, the bank has been subject to sanctions by all leading Western countries.
Viktor Medvedchuk, formerly Ukraine’s leading pro-Russian politician and “Putin’s godfather,” is also facilitating Chinese penetration into the occupied territory of Ukraine. Medvedchuk was actively involved in joint business projects with China while still a Ukrainian parliament member: companies associated with him and his business partner, Taras Kozak, have been building a cable car on the Russian-Chinese border near Blagoveshchensk and Heihe since 2020.
Viktor Medvedchuk was actively involved in the coal trade in the so-called “LPR-DPR” territory through his company, Donskiye Ugli, which became one of the key beneficiaries of the local coal industry in 2021. Following the outbreak of full-scale war, Donskiye Ugli rapidly expanded, taking control of mines in the occupied Donbas territory and then supplying coal to China under the guise of “Russian” products. However, due to a reduction in Chinese purchases of Russian coal and the general inefficiency of Medvedchuk’s company, it found itself in debt to the tune of 2 billion rubles in 2026 .
Medvedchuk’s business is involved not only in exports to China, but also in imports—his structures supplied trucks from China (products of the Chinese branch of the German concern Daimler Truck) to the occupied Donbas.
One Belt, One Road
Chinese expansion into Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory is not yet widespread. “China is keeping an eye on things,” as one LPR official put it. But it is gradually becoming more systemic: more and more Chinese companies are entering the occupied territories, “feeding” the local elites. For China, this is also a test of the sanctions’ strength, with private companies “exploring” the territory for the arrival of China’s public-private giants.
China is testing the strength of sanctions, private companies are “exploring” the territory for the arrival of private-public giants
Beyond purely economic considerations, geopolitics are also important. Crimea plays a key role in the Black Sea region, and Ukraine’s southeastern territories serve as a strategic springboard for expansion into Eastern Europe. For China, this expansion is part of a global strategy to create a Eurasian logistics corridor.
This logic supports Russia’s construction of the Rostov-Mariupol-Melitopol-Crimea highway (the so-called “Novorossiya” highway), which could be connected to the “Europe-Western China” international transport corridor—a joint project between Russia, China, and Kazakhstan. Incidentally, crushed stone from the same “Chinese” quarry in the Donetsk region is being used in the construction of the “Novorossiya” highway .
Another important motive for China is access to resources, primarily rare earth element deposits. According to Ukrainian estimates, half of Ukraine’s rare earth deposits are located in the Russian occupation zone.
For example, the Donetsk region contains lithium and titanium deposits, as well as Ukraine’s only comprehensive source of zirconium. All of this could eventually fall into the hands of Chinese developers, as Russia lacks the technology and resources to fully mine them.
The same can be said about the entire economy of the occupied part of Ukraine. While all the occupiers’ resources are devoted to waging war and maintaining regime stability, the Chinese presence in these lands will continue to grow.