Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 brought many things – the first major conflict in Europe since 1945, renewed fears of nuclear escalation and urgent questions about the size and strength of the Nato alliance.
But Vladimir Putin’s war also hastened a murkier partnership between China, Russia, Iran and North Korea – the so-called Crink countries. Through increased military, economic, political and technological cooperation, this marriage of convenience is enabling Russian aggression in Ukraine and poses profound risks to the rest of Europe – from attacks on its critical infrastructure to rampant disinformation campaigns.
Some European leaders are already sounding the alarm. Kaja Kallas, the former Estonian prime minister and new EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, recently warned about the increased cooperation between Crink countries in support of Russia’s war in Ukraine, while Lord Robertson, the former Nato secretary-general, has described the grouping as a ‘deadly quartet’ with increasingly closer ties.
With Donald Trump returning to the White House in 2025, the threat posed by the Crink countries is likely to increase. Following through with his campaign promise to ‘end the war in Ukraine in one day’ – unlikely on Kyiv’s terms – would only embolden Russia further. On Iran, too, a return to the strategy of ‘maximum pressure’ would isolate Tehran’s leadership and increase its dependency on the quartet.
Can Putin and his enablers be stopped? That will depend on Europe’s leaders at least recognizing them as a systemic, interconnected threat.
A destructive partnership
Although more visible in the past few years, relations between the Crink countries are longstanding. China has been North Korea’s primary ally and trading partner for decades and has been buying Iranian oil since 2020 to help offset US sanctions. In 2015, Iran and Russia coordinated a military campaign to ensure Syrian president Basher al-Assad remained in power after the Arab Spring. These relations are not new.
Yet it was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the isolation Moscow faced after Europe and the United States cut ties that pushed these loosely aligned countries into a more recognizable, destructive partnership, driven in part by western sanctions.
Evidence of increased cooperation between these countries has mounted since the invasion. Days before Russian tanks entered Ukraine, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping agreed on a ‘limitless partnership’ based on deeper economic, military and political ties. Today, China is Russia’s largest export destination of crude oil, and it continues to export dual-use technology – for both civilian and military purposes – to Russia. This includes semiconductors and machine tools that are helping blunt the impact of US and European Union sanctions.
Iran and Russia will soon sign a defence cooperation treaty, which Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, described as ‘a serious factor in strengthening Russian-Iranian relations’. Tehran has also become an important arms supplier to Russia, providing drones and short-range ballistic missiles. As of October 2024, North Korea has sent 10,000 troops to fight Putin’s war in Ukraine, after signing a mutual defence pact this year.
Despite growing ties between the four, their aims are not uniform and their relations still display a degree of mistrust. Beijing, for its part, has pushed back against North Korea’s troop deployment in Russia, fearing a closer relationship between Moscow and Pyongyang could threaten its desire for continued stability on the Korean peninsula. Putin’s latest efforts to secure a gas pipeline deal with China have also failed due to Xi’s price demands, showing national interests still prevail in the ‘limitless partnership’.
In broad political terms, however, the Crink countries do share a common desire to challenge the rules-based international order, undermine US hegemony and make way for alternative systems of governance. For Europe, this convergence poses significant risks.
Why this matters for Europe
The most pressing risk is the continuation of Russia’s war in Ukraine, which Crink countries are enabling by supplying key technologies, military capabilities, military expertise and political cover. On a political level, their cooperation ensures Russia is not isolated on the world stage, while economically it has helped erode the effectiveness of EU and US sanctions and export controls and kept Russia’s economy afloat.
The threat to Europe from China is systemic, if less visible, and there is little consensus among European countries about the specific risk it poses. Some experts have argued that Russia’s war in Ukraine has allowed China to advance its ambitions to emerge as an alternative centre of global influence. Beijing’s role in enabling bombs to be dropped on Kyiv on a daily basis doesn’t just threaten European security, but advances Beijing’s broader aim of undermining the US-led international order. In the Crink partnership, a neat separation of theatres of conflict is impossible.
Putin’s ambitions extend beyond armed conflict in Ukraine. For the past decade, but more visibly since 2022, Moscow has been waging a ‘grey zone’ war – that is a war by non-military means – against European states. The increased support Russia receives from North Korea, China and Iran, in terms of diplomatic cover and economic support, enables these efforts.
The most visible examples of Russian attacks in recent months have been the signal jamming of commercial flights in the Baltics, arson attacks in Germany, Poland and Britain, and the mapping and sabotaging of critical infrastructure in the North and Baltic Seas.
An opening from Europe’s far-right
Threats to Europe’s political stability also loom. The steady electoral advance of far-right parties across EU countries has created more opportunities for Russia and China to secure their interests in Europe, and drive a wedge between the US and the EU, and even among European countries.
In recent years, Putin has cultivated friendships across Europe. Hungary, Putin’s closest ally in the EU, has been a vocal sceptic of Europe’s support to Ukraine, significantly delaying the approval of the European Council’s €50 billion aid package to Kyiv earlier this year and trying to block EU sanctions against Russia. In July, Victor Orbán, Hungary’s populist and Eurosceptic leader, extended a scheme making it easier for third country citizens to obtain work visas to Russians and Belarusians, which effectively allowed Russian citizens free travel through the Schengen zone.
In France, Putin’s ally Marine le Pen – who has received funding from Russian banks in the past – increased her seats in the French parliament by 60 per cent in this year’s elections. In Austria and the Netherlands, Russia-supporting Freedom Parties – FPO and PVV, respectively – won national elections, while Italy’s prime minister hails from a neo-fascist party, now in coalition with the far-right Lega party – an open supporter of Putin.
The growing number of victories by politicians supportive of Putin in Europe and the steady rightward tilt of key EU states matters because it changes the make up of the European Council and its consensual approach towards economic and security issues, including sanctions, defence and the broader question of EU enlargement.
For other members of the quartet, Europe’s growing electoral embrace of far-right parties is opening doors. In Germany, a prominent politician for the far-right party Alternative for Germany was shown to have extensive ties to a Chinese influence network. Earlier this year, President Orbán was reported to have signed up for €16 billion-worth of Chinese foreign direct investment.
How Europe can respond
Policy responses to a threat as variable as this one may seem limited, but there is a lot Europe can do to mitigate its most destructive effects. First, European leaders cannot separate the threat of Russia’s war in Ukraine from the range of other hostile actions that Moscow – and its Crink backers – are waging against Europe. This is one systemic threat.
In practical terms, European leaders with the support of other G7 allies must do more to restrict the export of military capabilities from China, Iran and North Korea to Russia. In October, the US and EU imposed sanctions on Iran in response to its supplying ballistic missiles. But this cost is not high enough and needs to cover dual-use and military equipment and technologies from China as well. Beijing remains the essential partner in this axis, and the one which is least constrained in the global economy.
Second, Europe must build its defensive credibility by developing its own defence industrial base. Decades of insufficient spending on defence has meant that Europe is now running out of military kit to donate to Ukraine and replenish supplies. Rebuilding a stronger defence industrial base in Europe is a key aspect of deterrence that will reduce dependence on the US, which itself is struggling to keep up with demand from Ukraine, Israel and its allies.
