Back in early February 2022, Vladimir Putin had his first in-person meeting with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping for nearly two years, at the opening of the Winter Olympics ceremony in Beijing. To avoid disrupting this landmark event for Xi and to allow China to finalise the multiple hoarding deals for oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies in which it had been engaged over the previous year, as analysed in full in my latest book on the new global oil market order, Putin had delayed the imminent invasion of Ukraine. At that meeting,…