The Defense Intelligence Agency’s 2026 worldwide threat assessment goes further, concluding that “Russia relies on China as its key partner in countering the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, and almost certainly will advance ties in 2026 by continuing military technical cooperation, combined patrols, and sharing lessons learned from its war in Ukraine.”
For Congress, that assessment raises a direct question: Is the U.S. adequately positioned for a strategic environment in which its two primary adversaries are actively coordinating against it?
The Big Picture
Russia’s pivot toward Asia predates the Ukraine war. When Vladimir Putin returned to the Russian presidency in 2012, he outlined what observers called a “turn to the East,” focused on economic development and trade, particularly with China. But as the economic benefits of that strategy remained limited, constrained by Russia’s reliance on energy exports and growing dependency on Beijing, Russia turned increasingly to its military to assert regional relevance.
Russia’s Pacific Fleet, headquartered in Vladivostok, is the primary instrument of that strategy. The fleet comprises roughly one-third of Russia’s sea-based nuclear deterrent force and has been modernized over the past decade. Alongside Russia’s strategic bomber force, it conducts large-scale naval exercises, port visits, and patrols of contested maritime areas, including near Taiwan and in the East China Sea.
The combined exercises with China have grown in both frequency and sophistication. From 7 exercises or patrols in 2019, the number dropped to 2 in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, returned to 7 in both 2022 and 2023, and jumped to 11 in 2024. The Department of Defense, in its 2025 annual report to Congress, described that year as one in which China and Russia “expanded their defense engagement, increasing the frequency, scope, and complexity of their combined military exercises.”
The milestones have been notable. In July 2024, Russian and Chinese bombers conducted a combined strategic patrol over the Bering Sea for the first time, with Chinese nuclear-capable H-6N bombers entering the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone, also for the first time. The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) intercepted the aircraft. In August 2025, Russia and China conducted their first combined submarine patrol in the Sea of Japan and East China Sea. In September 2024, Russia held its largest naval exercise since the fall of the Soviet Union, Ocean 2024, which included a Chinese naval contingent.
Trilateral exercises have also expanded. Russia, China, and Iran have conducted joint naval drills annually since 2019, with South Africa joining on several occasions. In January 2026, all four countries conducted a combined naval exercise.
The CRS report notes important limits to this partnership. Russia and China do not share a formal defense pact, and their forces are not interoperable. Exercises are often highly scripted and may not reflect real-world combat conditions. Mutual distrust persists, with leaked Russian planning documents suggesting historical concern about Chinese conventional military superiority. Nevertheless, the report concludes that both militaries benefit from the cooperation, including by exchanging best practices, familiarizing each other with command structures, and exploring emerging capabilities such as drones.
For China’s People’s Liberation Army, which has had no major combat experience since the late 1970s, the partnership offers something specific: the ability to train alongside a military actively learning from a major land war.
Political Stakes
The report lands at a complicated moment for the Trump administration, which has pursued diplomatic engagement with Russia over Ukraine while simultaneously framing China as the primary U.S. strategic competitor. The CRS findings complicate both strategies.
On Russia, the report makes clear that even as ceasefire diplomacy proceeds, Moscow is deepening military ties with Beijing in ways that directly threaten U.S. homeland security and challenge U.S. influence across the Indo-Pacific. The 2026 Annual Threat Assessment of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence states that “Russia views itself as a key geostrategic competitor of the U.S. and seeks a multipolar world order,” and that Russia “is also likely to continue collaborating with other powers, including U.S. adversaries, to jointly oppose the U.S. where their respective interests overlap.”
On China, the deepening Russia partnership amplifies Chinese military reach in the Pacific at a time when the administration is managing sensitive negotiations over Taiwan, trade, and technology. The 2025 Annual Threat Assessment states that “Cooperation between China and Russia has the greatest potential to pose enduring risks to U.S. interests,” adding that their leaders “probably believe they are more capable of countering perceived U.S. aggression together than alone.”
For congressional Republicans, particularly those on the Armed Services Committee, the report provides a basis for pressing the administration on defense spending and Indo-Pacific posture. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said during a March 2026 hearing, “In the past two years, we’ve seen Russian and Chinese bombers and warships operating jointly near Alaska. This is a significant demonstration of military cooperation between our two most capable adversaries right off our shores.”
For Democrats, the report offers a line of oversight questioning around whether diplomatic outreach to Russia is accounting for the military coordination happening simultaneously in Asia.
For U.S. allies in the region, particularly Japan and South Korea, the exercises represent a direct and ongoing pressure campaign. The geographic pattern of Russia-China naval exercises, the CRS report notes, suggests Russia’s leadership is more willing to conduct exercises that risk antagonizing China’s neighbors than China is to antagonize its Western economic partners in Europe.
The Bottom Line
The CRS report gives Congress a detailed evidentiary foundation for a set of decisions it has been slow to confront: Russia and China are building a de facto military partnership aimed at countering the United States, and that partnership is growing more capable and more geographically assertive by the year.
The 119th Congress has several tools available. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2026 already requires an expanded annual report on Russian military developments to include an assessment of Russia-China military cooperation. The report suggests Congress could go further, including by requiring a National Intelligence Estimate on the trajectory of Russia-China military relations, establishing a dedicated interagency task force, or directing the existing “Adversary Alignment” working group, created under the same NDAA, to focus specifically on the Russia-China-Iran-North Korea axis.
However, the CRS report is, by design, a map of the terrain rather a set of orders for Congress, and the terrain it describes is one in which the window for deliberate, coordinated U.S. response is narrowing.
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