Last week, the Zhejiang Chouzhou Commercial Bank suspended all transactions for clients from Russia and Belarus, raising concerns about the potential impact on Russian exporters. The move may have been influenced by recent expansions of U.S. financial controls and the risk of secondary sanctions.
While the Chinese Foreign Ministry has not commented on the issue, Russian officials express confidence in resolving the matter with Beijing.
Russia already tried to align with the west, even trying to join NATO, and were denied. At this point, I doubt they entertain even the dream of the west ever accepting them.
That is not true. Russia never tried to join NATO. Putin just had a talk in the beginning of his reign with NATO heads about joining, but it was never publicly debated in russia and never applied officially.
After the orange revolution in 2004 in ukraine and the protests for more democracy in 2007 in Russia, Putin was very angry and offended by his own citizens. By many journalists accounts, after those protests Putin developed a strong distrust and grudge against his own citizens and was most likely the tipping point of his authoritarian alignment to china. 2012 Xi came into power and 2014 russia annexed crimea. The rest is history.
Maybe there were moments between 2001 and 2003 where a different path could have been possible. For Example when Putin called Bush after 9/11 to offer an axis against terrorism. But the Details about those two years are not public. Maybe time can tell one day where we went wrong.
There was talk, back in 1990s (iirc?) of europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok. I think it’s a pity we missed that opportunity. I’ve crossed the Russian-Chinese border on a few occasions, years ago, back then it felt culturally that was a european border. Now, the way it’s going, seems more likely Siberia will end up attached to China.
(by the way, wrt OP, China has many many banks…)