Hours before Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in late February, the Chinese Foreign Ministry issued a statement that was clear, stern and not really about Russia or Ukraine at all.

“Taiwan is not Ukraine,” Hua Chunying, the ministry’s spokeswoman, told reporters in Beijing. “Taiwan has always been an inalienable part of China. This is an indisputable legal and historical fact.”

But with no end in sight to the bloody war in Ukraine and with tensions significantly rising in the Taiwan Strait, the two geopolitical challenges are intersecting in complex and unpredictable ways.

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, on Wednesday wasted no time in linking the two, saying that Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit this week to Taiwan was a “manifestation of the same course” that the United States has taken in Ukraine. Even though it was Russia that invaded Ukraine, he blamed the West for the conflict.