Inside the Pipeline: How China Is Secretly Training Russia's Army

Classified Russian documents confirm Beijing authorised covert military instruction for Russian troops at People's Liberation Army facilities in late 2025, exposing the operational depth of Sino-Russian defence cooperation.

Intelligence Lead

Classified Russian military documents and testimony from European intelligence officials confirm that Russia's Defence Minister Andrey Belousov personally authorised a covert programme under which approximately 200 Russian service members received training at People's Liberation Army facilities in Beijing and Nanjing in late 2025. The curriculum covered drone operations, explosives and mine warfare, electronic warfare systems, and radiological, biological, and chemical (RBC) warfare tactics — a portfolio that maps directly onto Russia's identified capability gaps in the Ukraine theatre. The revelation, sourced by Reuters and corroborated across multiple intelligence channels, represents the most operationally significant confirmation to date of direct Chinese military assistance to Russian combat forces.

Situation Report

The covert training programme was established under an internal order issued by Belousov in August 2025. Under that order, a Russian Armed Forces delegation travelled to China to participate in training activities at PLA installations. The formal agreement establishing the programme was signed by Russian Major General Rustam Khusainov and Chinese Senior Colonel Sun Dayun. The Russian delegation was led by Colonel General Rustam Muradov, deputy commander-in-chief of Russia's land forces — a seniority of representation that signals deliberate Kremlin-level commitment to the arrangement.

Training activities were assessed to have taken place across two PLA facilities: one in Beijing and one in Nanjing. The Nanjing facility is associated with the PLA's ground forces training infrastructure, while Beijing-based instruction is assessed to have involved command-level personnel. The specialised nature of the curriculum — with particular emphasis on drone employment, electronic warfare, and RBC warfare — suggests the programme was tailored to identified Russian operational requirements rather than generic military exchange.

The existence of classified Russian documents describing the arrangement has been verified by journalists at Reuters. European officials with direct access to intelligence reporting on the programme independently confirmed the training's occurrence and its Kremlin-level authorisation. One document reviewed by reporters references Belousov's August 2025 internal order by name, providing a direct paper trail from the Defence Ministry to the PLA training sites.

The 200-strong cohort reported is assessed as an initial operational tranche rather than the ceiling of the programme. The depth of the institutional arrangements — signed agreements, named senior officers, and formal curriculum design — indicates a structured, repeatable pipeline rather than a one-time exchange.

Background & Context

Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Beijing has maintained a public posture of neutrality, consistently denying that it has provided military assistance to Moscow. That posture has faced sustained pressure from Western governments, which have accused China of supplying dual-use technologies — including drones, microelectronics, and optical systems — that have appeared in Russian weapons systems recovered on the battlefield. The latest disclosures move the needle significantly further: from material supply to active human instruction in combat-relevant disciplines.

The drone and electronic warfare components of the curriculum are particularly significant. Russia has expended substantial drone resources in Ukraine and has worked to develop domestic production and operator capacity throughout the conflict. PLA doctrine on drone swarm employment, targeting, and counter-drone electronic warfare represents a body of knowledge that Russia does not independently possess at comparable depth. The RBC component is more difficult to contextualise without additional source material, but its inclusion in a programme of this scale — authorised at ministerial level — is treated by Western counterintelligence analysts as a data point requiring close monitoring.

The Russia-China relationship has deepened substantially since the February 2022 invasion. President Putin and President Xi have met multiple times, and a wide-ranging strategic partnership agreement signed in 2024 pledged enhanced defence and security cooperation. However, Beijing has consistently been careful to calibrate its public commitments, wary of triggering secondary sanctions from the United States and European Union. The covert nature of the training programme is consistent with that calculus: Beijing is providing substantive military value while maintaining the infrastructure of deniability.

Analysis & Assessment

The confirmed existence of a ministerially-authorised, PLA-based training programme for Russian combat personnel is a qualitative escalation in Sino-Russian military cooperation. Regardless of the programme's scale at any given moment, its institutional structure — signed agreements, senior officer involvement, and curriculum design aligned to Russian operational needs — establishes a precedent and a mechanism that can be expanded. Western assessments that China has been providing only economic and material support to Russia are no longer sustainable.

The political implications are considerable. For NATO members, the revelations are likely to accelerate internal debates about secondary sanctions targeting Chinese defence-linked entities. For the European Union, which has pursued a calibrated China policy distinct from Washington's more confrontational posture, the intelligence represents a significant complication. For Beijing, the question is whether the operational value of deepening Russian military integration outweighs the reputational and economic costs of continued exposure.

The timing of the disclosure — through a Reuters exclusive drawing on classified Russian documents and European intelligence sources — suggests either a deliberate Western intelligence leak intended to raise the costs of Chinese involvement, or an intelligence community calculation that controlled disclosure serves deterrence aims more effectively than silent collection. Either reading points toward intensifying pressure on Beijing in the months ahead. How China responds — whether through public denial, quiet programme suspension, or doubling down — will be the key indicator of the strategic trajectory of the Sino-Russian partnership.