Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin toasted a friendship with "no limits" at a warm meeting in February, but just one month later that bond is being tested by the war in Ukraine.

With international outrage and sanctions mounting against Russia, Beijing is scrambling to avoid being tainted by association with Moscow while also maintaining their increasingly close ties.

Once bitter Cold War rivals, China and Russia have moved closer than ever since Xi Jinping took power nearly a decade ago, driven by their shared desire to confront US power.

But China seems to have been caught flat-footed by Russia's military offensive, fierce Ukrainian resistance, and the volume of the resulting international anti-Kremlin backlash.

Beijing, which has long demanded respect for territorial integrity in border disputes with its own neighbours, has been forced into rhetorical contortions on Ukraine to avoid upsetting Russia.

While maintaining lip service to national sovereignty, China has insisted that Moscow's security concerns regarding Ukraine and the broader expansion of the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) are valid.

It has refused to condemn Moscow, with Chinese government spokespersons remonstrating foreign journalists at press conferences who refer to the assault on Ukraine as an "invasion".

- Bewildered Beijing -

At the same time, censors on the tightly controlled Chinese internet have struggled to shape domestic public discourse, initially allowing vociferous posts that tracked Beijing's anti-US rhetoric, before pivoting to scrub lewd messages objectifying women fleeing Ukraine as well as anti-war sentiment.

"You could see the bewilderment in the early statements," said Sergey Radchenko, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Failure to finesse the situation puts Beijing at risk of being labelled a Putin enabler, potentially alienating Western trading partners and endangering the tenuous balance of links China has cultivated in recent years with both Russia and Ukraine.

The situation has effectively paralysed China, according to Richard Ghiasy, an expert at the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies.

"Security interests virtually always trump economic interests" in China's calculus, and it will not fundamentally shift toward a more pro-Ukraine stance, he told AFP.

Russia is "a giant, nuclear-armed and resource-rich neighbour" that China won't risk agitating, Ghiasy said.

Beijing's difficult position is compounded by the plight of its 6,000 citizens in Ukraine, who are now being gradually evacuated by road and rail to neighbouring countries along with other displaced persons.

More than a dozen governments urged their citizens to leave Ukraine by mid-February, but China refrained from doing the same.

- Least bad outcome -

It instead urged its citizens to "remain calm" and stay at home even as Russian troops moved onto Ukrainian soil, and was forced to cancel a proposed airlift after Ukraine closed its airspace to civilian planes.

In a hint of how Beijing misread the situation, its embassy in Ukraine initially urged its citizens to display China's distinctive red flag on their cars as a protective measure, quickly retracting that advice after some reported subsequent hostility from locals.

The "political position that the Chinese government has adopted has made things difficult for Chinese citizens there," said Manoj Kewalramani, China studies fellow at the Bangalore-based Takshashila Institution.

"If we see Chinese casualties in Ukraine, then the pro-Russian neutrality of the Chinese government that we are seeing today will become harder to maintain," Kewalramani added.

With little room to manoeuvre, China is adopting the mantle of mediator.

Xi urged Putin in a call last week to resolve the crisis by forming a "sustainable European security mechanism through negotiations", and China's foreign minister told his Ukrainian counterpart that Beijing "regrets" the conflict and hopes the two sides can find a diplomatic solution.

But any mediating role assumed by China would stop short of using its influence to get Putin to change, said Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at London's School of Oriental and African Studies.

"It is outward neutrality, but in reality, still on Russia's side," said Tsang.

A negotiated solution is now China's least-bad scenario, according to analysts.

The worst case, said Tsang, would be for the tightening sanctions on Russia -- or a failure of its military objectives in Ukraine -- to result in an uprising that ousts Putin from power, potentially leading to a pro-Western government in Moscow.

"I doubt Xi wants to see the war in Ukraine escalate further," Tsang said.

"But he would want to see Putin be able to get what he wants without causing too much collateral damage ... for China and its ties with the rest of the world."

'How can I survive': stranded Chinese run gauntlet in Ukraine
Beijing (AFP) March 5, 2022 - Cao never imagined his holiday in eastern Europe would involve hunkering down in a bomb shelter as Russian shells thudded outside near the devastated Ukrainian city of Chernihiv.

The 25-year-old, one of about 6,000 Chinese nationals who were in Ukraine when war broke out, described feeling helpless and abandoned after essentially being told by China's Embassy in Ukraine to fend for himself.

"The embassy told us to find a way to solve the problems we're facing by ourselves," he told AFP from a small town outside Chernihiv where he has sought refuge with a local family.

"They said that fighting is everywhere, they aren't able to do anything... Shouldn't this be a nation's responsibility?" he said via China's WeChat messaging app.

China waited until war broke out to announce evacuation efforts for its citizens, weeks after Western countries warned theirs to leave, and has avoided condemning its close ally Moscow.

China's foreign ministry has expressed concern for the safety of its nationals and on Thursday said it had helped more than 3,000 evacuate.

The first two flights carrying evacuees landed back in China on Saturday, state media said.

- Running the gauntlet -

But many more remain stranded.

"We want to leave, but there are no cars. I'm afraid I'll be killed if I attempt to walk several hundred kilometres," Cao said, giving only a nickname.

With Ukrainian airspace shut, some Chinese have joined the desperate rush to catch trains out of the country or are risking the perilous drive to its western borders to get on flights.

A Chinese national was shot and injured on Tuesday while attempting to flee Ukraine, state media reported, without specifying who fired on him.

Cao said locals had been kind to him, offering food and shelter, but added: "I don't know how much longer I can stay in a stranger's home for free. How can I survive?"

Other Chinese have claimed they faced hostility and even physical attacks from Ukrainians angry over China's reluctance to condemn Russia, and have called for Chinese Internet users to avoid inflammatory posts.

China's internet is frequently a forum for nationalistic, pro-government views, and many users have cheered Putin online in comments apparently condoned by Chinese censors.

But last week China's Weibo platform deleted hundreds of misogynistic comments about "taking in Ukrainian beauties."

"Bullets won't fly out of the screen and hit you, but some inappropriate remarks may cause all of us Chinese here unnecessary trouble," a Chinese man in Kyiv who identified himself by the surname Lin said in a Weibo video uploaded Sunday.

Lin later told AFP by phone that he was shot at by armed civilians while shopping for groceries last week, but played down local hostility as isolated incidents.

- 'Enormous pressure' -

"The psychological pressure on us is enormous... but the embassy is actively coordinating evacuation plans which makes us feel reassured," said the 28-year-old stand-up comedian, who was in Ukraine for personal business.

He said some objectionable comments online "don't represent all Chinese people's attitudes towards the Ukraine conflict."

Lin said that he would evacuate to the western city of Lviv by train on Saturday before attempting to drive to Poland. He said he refused an embassy evacuation spot because his Ukrainian girlfriend was not eligible.

Some Chinese have received little sympathy back home despite their plight.

A Chinese student in Kyiv on Tuesday posted a recording of her desperate call to an embassy staffer, who advised her to shelter in place or board a train to Lviv by herself.

She later deleted the post after being targeted by a barrage of unsympathetic posts calling her an ingrate.

Recent patriotic Chinese action movies have promoted the idea that citizens facing danger abroad will be rescued by their country, but the reality has been different for Cao.

"I can't believe that a country ... would not only be useless but also shamelessly says it will never abandon a citizen and ends up abandoning a whole load of citizens," he said.

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Sanctions, no-fly zone, diplomacy: the West's complex calculus to stop Putin
Washington (AFP) March 5, 2022
Despite unprecedented sanctions and strong support for Ukraine, Western states have failed to stop the Russian onslaught and are even expecting things to get worse. But their options for intensifying pressure on President Vladimir Putin are likely to be limited. - More sanctions? - G7 countries promised Friday to impose "tough new sanctions" on Russia, and the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged to " increase the extraordinary pressure we're already exerting." But there is not much ... read more