Russia has agreed to equip and train a Chinese airborne battalion and share its expertise in airdropping armored vehicles that analysts say could boost Beijing’s capacity to seize Taiwan, according to newly obtained documents that show the two nations’ deepening military cooperation.
Russia is helping prepare China to attack Taiwan, documents suggest
Russia is using its battlefield experience to give Chinese airborne units the training and technical knowhow to carry out lightning-fast operations.
September 26, 2025 The Washington Post
Moscow has become increasingly dependent on China for dual use items to prop up its sanctions-hit military industry and sustain its war in Ukraine, but the deals show how Beijing is simultaneously tapping its partner’s battlefield expertise to further Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s drive to build a modern military with capabilities that match or surpass those of the United States.
The accords are an example of the two militaries moving beyond symbolic joint drills and public statements to develop interoperable systems and shared combat experience in areas that China considers critical for winning a battle over Taiwan, the self-governing island of 23 million that Beijing claims as its territory.
The documents — details of which have been independently verified by the Royal United Services Institute, a British think tank — appear to demonstrate the deepening alliance between Moscow and Beijing as Russia seeks to forge a new global order to counter the West and disrupt the status quo.
The intricate level of cooperation between Russia and China also underscores a weakness in Pentagon efforts to divert resources from defending Ukraine and Europe and to focus instead on countering China in the Asia-Pacific region, analysts said.
“It is a very good example of how the Russians have become an enabler for the Chinese,” making the security challenges of the two countries almost impossible to separate, said Jack Watling, senior research fellow for Land Warfare at RUSI.
In a future war over Taiwan, Moscow’s supply of oil, gas and other natural resources — and its large defense industry — could become “strategic backup for China,” added Watling, who co-authored a report published Friday by RUSI on the documents.
The deals
The 800-page cache — obtained by hactivist group Black Moon and reviewed by The Washington Post — shows Russia agreeing in October 2024 to sell 37 BMD-4M light amphibious vehicles, 11 Sprut-SDM1 self-propelled anti-tank guns, 11 BTR-MDM airborne armored personnel carriers to the People’s Liberation Army Air Force.
The main equipment provision contract — which had a provisional value of $584 million before it was finalized — also included the transfer of several command and observation vehicles and special purpose parachute systems designed to airdrop heavy loads from high altitudes.
Additional documents in the cache show several rounds of negotiations including a meeting in Beijing in April 2024 at which the Chinese side requested Moscow accelerate the delivery timeline for certain vehicles, include complete technical documentation and adapt the weaponry to make it compatible with Chinese software, electronic, radio and navigation systems.
Separate documents outlined training programs for Chinese paratroopers in the combat use of the weaponry — and the advanced command and control systems used to direct operations — by Russian specialists in Russia and later in China.
In its report on the agreements published Friday, RUSI said the training and the transfers described in the files would give China’s air force “expanded air maneuver capability” that offered “offensive options against Taiwan, the Philippines and other island states in the regions.”
The Kremlin did not respond to a request for comment on the deal. Similarly, neither China’s Ministry of Defense nor state-owned defense contractors involved in the deals responded to requests for comment.
While China has so far declined to provide military hardware at scale for Russia’s war effort, the two countries have continued to celebrate a close security partnership that both consider important for countering the U.S. and its allies.
“Military cooperation between China and Russia goes far beyond what has been publicly acknowledged,” said a Taiwanese security official commenting on the Russia-China deals.
Taiwan has tracked Russian provision of an advanced paratrooper command system to China and its military is prepared to respond effectively, the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal security assessments.
Over the last year, Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin have attended each other’s military parades. Their two militaries held 14 joint exercises in 2024, nearly double the number a decade earlier. Last week, Chinese military representatives attended Russia and Belarus’s Zapad-2025 war games where Russian demonstrated the high-altitude airdrops of heavy equipment that China, according to the agreements, is seeking to replicate.
Although the Chinese military is widely viewed as superior to Russia’s, it lags behind Moscow in airborne combat experience and capabilities for air maneuver, which Russia has deployed in Ukraine and Syria.
The agreement will give Beijing the opportunity to take Russian technology and apply it to its own weapons, analysts said. “Russia is transferring technologies that will allow China to scale-up the production of similar weapons and military equipment through localization and modernization,” according to the authors of the RUSI report.
Target Taiwan
For China, Russia’s airdrop expertise and weaponry is most valuable as part of preparations for a potential invasion of Taiwan, analysts said.
Chinese planners consider small, well-equipped units delivered by helicopter or aircraft “absolutely essential” in their plans to deliver thousands of troops to Taiwan in the early hours of a conflict, said Lyle Goldstein, an expert on the Chinese and Russian militaries at Brown University.
Even with its far greater firepower, a full-scale takeover of Taiwan would be a complex and risky move for an untested Chinese military. To succeed, China would need to deliver hundreds of thousands of troops to the small number of suitable landing spots along the island’s shores — all while deterring or defeating a potential U.S. intervention.
“They have studied D-Day backward, forward and upside down [and] realized that it would have failed without an airborne component,” said Goldstein, who is writing a book on China-Russia military ties.
That makes Russian experience in Ukraine even more valuable for Beijing, and right now, “Russia will do more or less anything to keep China happy and cooperative,” he said.
Xi, China’s most powerful leader in decades, has repeatedly said that bringing Taiwan under Chinese Communist Party rule is an essential step in the country’s journey to “national rejuvenation.”
To achieve that goal, he has ordered the military to modernize faster and prepare to “fight and win” wars, including, according to U.S. intelligence, being ready to seize Taiwan by 2027, although experts say this is not a deadline to launch an attack.
For Taiwan, Russian support for China’s already significant airborne attack capabilities intensifies concerns that Beijing could seize infrastructure inland even as it storms ports and beaches along the coast.
“Previously, China’s lack of ability to deliver troops in large numbers and maintain logistical support were considered weaknesses, but if Russia is providing technical support, that will be a bigger challenge for Taiwan’s anti-landing operations,” said Su Tzu-yun, a director at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, a Taiwanese think tank.
Faced with intensifying Chinese aggression and uncertain support from the Trump administration, Taiwan has boosted military spending and focused on training to repel a potential invasion. This year’s annual exercises involved practicing shooting down a Chinese airborne attack on the island’s main Taoyuan International Airport — a location Chinese military commentators have flagged as key for breaking through Taiwanese defenses.
Leaked Pentagon assessments from 2023 ruled Taiwan’s air defenses especially vulnerable to missile strikes that could cede air superiority to China early in a conflict.
Command and control
Analysts said technical instruction in Russian command and control systems, which integrate battlefield data from multiple sources to improve decision-making, would be of particular interest for China as it plans a potential assault on Taiwan.
“China expects to fight in a degraded environment where their systems will be under threat from jamming and cyberattack. Having Russia train them to operate a potentially proven command and control system is going to be worth the millions of dollars they are going to spend,” said Joshua Arostegui, chair of the China Landpower Studies Center at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute.
“China has never really used its airborne forces in a combat situation,” he added.
In addition, supplying the Chinese airborne battalion with Russian amphibious vehicles, anti-tank guns, armored personnel carriers and command and observation vehicles would boost its capabilities to that of a conventional army unit, Arostegui added. “This would give them the opportunity to learn tactics, techniques, and procedures for airborne combined arms operations.”
Earlier documents from the cache, reported on by independent investigative outlet The Insider in August, showed Russian-Chinese cooperation to create an automated command system for Chinese airborne troops designed to coordinate operations, plan missions, designate targets and provide secure data transmission.
Russian customs records reviewed by The Insider indicated work on the joint project was underway, with two entries dated June 18, 2024, showing the transfer of “military purpose products” to state-owned China Electronics Technology Group (CETC) from Russia’s Research Institute of Communication and Control Systems.
Moscow has long been Beijing’s biggest arms supplier, although Chinese imports of Russian arms have dropped in recent years as the war in Ukraine stretched Russian production capacity and China’s own designs and manufacturing capacity improved. But official Chinese military publications have continued to regularly praise Russia’s advanced airdrop capabilities.
China’s air force in particular has been one of the largest recipients of Russian weaponry. It has purchased dozens of Il-76s — the heavy-lift transport aircraft that could be used to drop armored vehicles in an airborne assault — since 2005 while also rapidly expanded a fleet of its own domestic equivalent Y-20s.
China’s progress developing its own hardware was on display at the military parade in Beijing earlier this month when the PLA Air Force Airborne Corps revealed major upgrades to air-droppable vehicles built specifically for use with the Y-20 transport aircraft.
China’s purchase of Russian equipment was in part a way to receive training. “If you want the Russians to train you, the Russians aren’t going to be able to do that on a load of Chinese equipment,” RUSI’s Watling said. “It makes more sense to buy a battalion’s worth from Russia.”
Rudy Lu contributed to this report.