China Trained Russian Forces for Ukraine, Falsifying Jiang's 2025 Split Forecast
China covertly trained Russian service members who later returned to fight in Ukraine, Reuters reported on May 19, a disclosure that points to deepening military cooperation between Beijing and Moscow rather than the rupture Professor Jiang Xueqin forecast.
Mr. Jiang made the call in July 2025, in "Geo-Strategy Update #6: Is Putin the Ubermensch?" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgvAHZqaawA), a lecture assessing Vladimir Putin's standing and Russia's alliances. He assigned the prediction moderate confidence and a timeline of "very quickly," arguing that "there will be a falling out between China and Russia." At the time, the call carried genuine uncertainty: the two governments had grown closer through the war in Ukraine, but Mr. Jiang judged the alignment unstable. Nearly a year on, the partnership has moved the other way.
What Happened
Reuters reported on May 19 that Russian personnel had been covertly trained inside China before returning to the front in Ukraine, according to sources familiar with the arrangement. The report described a security relationship in which Beijing was contributing directly to Russia's war effort, not pulling away from it.
The tracker's automated fact-checker weighed that reporting against Mr. Jiang's call and concluded that the available evidence runs the opposite direction. Headlines now show deepening China-Russia cooperation, the fact-checker found, with China covertly training Russian forces for Ukraine — the inverse of a falling out. The "very quick" rupture Mr. Jiang predicted has not materialized within the window he implied. Prediction P072 has been recorded as wrong.
Track Record Context
The miss is the fifth wrong call among 31 resolved predictions, against a headline accuracy rate of 84% that counts partially confirmed outcomes as hits. Only 31 of the 350 predictions the tracker follows have been resolved, and five misses out of 31 is roughly one in six resolved calls — a small enough denominator that a single outcome still shifts the standing, and small enough that the long-run accuracy of Mr. Jiang's record is not yet settled.
Most of his calls remain pending, including others on China, so the category's eventual score is still open. The 319 unresolved predictions represent the bulk of the record, and the headline rate will move as they resolve.
What's Still Unknown
The resolution does not establish that a China-Russia rupture is impossible, only that the "very quick" break Mr. Jiang specified in mid-2025 did not arrive within the window he implied. Whether the partnership frays over a longer horizon, and along what timeline, lies outside what a single call can settle. Frictions between the two governments could still surface in trade, technology, or the balance of obligations between them.
Several of Mr. Jiang's other geopolitical forecasts remain pending or unverifiable, and the tracker will revisit them as evidence accumulates.
This blog post is updated each time the prediction's status changes. Read the full prediction set at jiangpredictions.com.
See the full prediction record at P072 on the tracker · All blog posts