Putin weakened by the Ukraine war: Is China reaching for Russia's east?. “For now, Vladivostok can continue to exist under the Russian flag, knowing that its old territories will one day fall into its lap,” expert Jan Kallberg wrote in an article for the US think tank Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) “If current trends continue, China can expect that, in the first year of the first war, the Chinese will soon be calling for a return of Vladostok to China,’ he said.