Abstract: The relevance of the study is due to the rapid development of bilateral political and economic relations between the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China in the context of modern international conjuncture, the rise of a direct and proxy confrontation between the states of the collective West and the countries of the global South, to which Russia and the PRC can be attributed. Moreover, it is worth mentioning the influence of the most important and current foreign political event of recent years: the beginning of a special military operation of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, which is the driver of bilateral relations between the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China. The object of study is the bilateral relations between the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China. The subject of study is the strategic partnership between China and Russia in the context of the modern international environment. The main task is to identify the key reasons for the rapid development of bilateral cooperation between the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China after the activation of the Ukrainian crisis in 2013. This work is based on the power transition theory which concretises the process of global leadership transition from one state to another. The scientific novelty of this study is based on the definition of the Ukrainian crisis, which began in 2013, as the main driver of development of bilateral cooperation between the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China. Moreover, the author has identified the most pressing problems of bilateral cooperation between the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, to which can be attributed the imbalance of political and economic cooperation, trade imbalance by groups of exported goods and technological dependence of Russia on the PRC.

Keywords: Crisis, Sanctions, Technologies, Trade, Power transition, USA, Ukraine, China, Russia, PRC