Well, obviously "communist" is no longer the right adjective, but I wonder if it goes further than arms.
Is the non-Communist Russian Federation engaged in economic and political as well as military dependency; rather as the hard-line Communist People's Republic of China is doing, and perhaps to counter that?
The relationship between the two powers is murky but ironically given that the RF is now of far-Right capitalist form, is more friendly than when both were Communist. It may be that theirs is an alliance of convenience against what they regards as their common "enemy" - the West and especially the USA - but at the same time both want as much control over the countries in between as they can achieve.
Whether the Russians will eventually throw out President Putin is a moot point, although he can't surely keep the truth about his "special military operation" and its harm to them a secret from them forever. For the time being though most believe Putin's twist that it's Russia valiantly trying to defend herself from the West and NATO. They know nothing else, thanks to his almost total grip on news outlets and the Internet.
How long a time being, though and what happens then?
It's a sobering thought, but neither Russia nor China have ever been democracies. So if their citizens did throw off the present despots, with whom and what would they replace them? They have no-one capable of administering such a system, but no doubt plenty who would love to take over for their own ends.
The nearest Russia came to anything like a constitutional monarchy was in the last years, so too little too late, before the Revolution that overthrew the Czar-ship, followed by the Bolshevik coup that led to the USSR. The Chinese merely replaced an autocratic king and yes-men courtiers with an autocratic committee of President and yes-men bureaucrats- and in both nations the consequent upheavals cost tens of millions of lives among their own populations.
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What these two present dictatorships have in common apart from cruelty and ruthlessness, is patience; more so perhaps the Chinese. Both governments have made sure they need not worry too much about public accountability and frequent multi-party elections. They do have elections, but only between approved candidates to ensure the status-quo. They also ensure they need not worry too much about other countries' opinions. These, and their tight grips on their citizens, allow both to operate long-term, coherent, stealthy international strategies, perhaps taking decades to work; but the Chinese are much better at it. This is a despot's luxury denied to democratic governments. (Small 'd', American readers please note!)
China is second only to the USA in world power, on course to be Number One. She is achieving that largely by economic and political manipulation but is not afraid to use military threats or even force where it thinks necessary, in support.
Putin may dream of Russia being Number Three, and hopefully Number Two. That may be a horribly realistic ambition; but he seems to lack President Xi's subtlety and cunning. Knowing only brute force, his tactics in Ukraine are pretty much as the Nazi invaders used against his parents', and his, home town of the then-Stalingrad; and as the Red Army used in turn as it drove Westwards towards Berlin.
He also lacks what China's Xi has - a stable system in which the President is much more of a Caretaker-For-Now. "Now" might be the man's life, but the system is intended as infinite. Presumably Vladimir Putin has his successors in mind, of similar ideas to his, just as unlikely to ask the Russian citizens their views; but in a less certain dynasty.
If he or his disciples succeed in making the extreme-Right RF either an active ally or a bitter rival of extreme-Left China, anything could happen, and with not only their own citizens as victims.
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So if India and some African countries do not speak out against Russia, why do they not?
Against China too. For example, I can understand Pakistan and Afghanistan being silent about their fellow-Muslims, the Uyghurs, as China is only next-door, albeit via a road-head at a rather mysterious settlement below very remote mountains in the far West of China's Tibetan conquest (take a Google Earth "reconnaisance flight"); but even the Saudis and Iranians seem strangely silent about the Chinese pogrom.
Perhaps they dare not.
