Could China, Russia’s “no-limits” friend, help rebuild Ukraine?

MANY RESIDENTS of Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, have grown so used to air-raid warnings that they pay little heed. They prefer to think, or pray, that the common pattern will prevail: that the city’s air-defence systems will work, more or less, or that the alerts will prove merely precautionary. But for those who do take shelter, the tunnels of the underground railway network are an obvious choice. Thanks to Chinese equipment, there is some relief to be found there during what can be a long and tedious wait for the all-clear.

Less than a year before Russia mounted its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, work was completed on kitting out the metro with a high-speed 4G mobile network. It uses hardware from Huawei, a Chinese telecoms firm of which Western countries are suspicious—several now ban the use of Huawei’s (even faster) 5G technology because of fears that it may enable China to harvest users’ secrets. As they sit on foldable stools or snooze on mats, while commuters rush by, the bomb-wary may well be using the 4G system on Chinese-branded handsets. Phones made by Xiaomi are among the most popular in Ukraine.