The Russian President and the President of China maintain a good relationship.
(Photo: AP)
Beijing/Washington Russia has not asked China for military support, Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. Russia has sufficient internal firepower to meet its goals in Ukraine on time and in full.
Several US media, citing US officials, had reported that Russia had asked China for military equipment to support its invasion of Ukraine. The Chinese Foreign Ministry has called this US disinformation. “Recently, the US has been constantly spreading disinformation against China. It’s malicious,” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said in Beijing.
The US media reports also said that Moscow had requested economic assistance from Beijing to limit the impact of the sanctions. The reports came just ahead of US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s meeting with top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi, which began Monday morning.
Sullivan told CNN on Sunday that the government is “closely monitoring” the extent to which China is providing “material or economic support” to Russia. “That’s one of our concerns,” he said. However, the US government made it clear to Beijing that the US would not stand idly by if a country were to compensate Russia for the economic damage caused by the sanctions.
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Beijing is trying to remain neutral
Rhetorically, Beijing is trying to maintain an apparently neutral position in the conflict and is calling on both sides to exercise moderation. However, it is becoming clear again and again that China is on Moscow’s side in the war.
The United States had repeatedly warned the Chinese government not to thwart sanctions against Russia. The question of the extent to which China was aware of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plan before he invaded Ukraine has come up again and again in recent days.
>> Read here: “China and Russia will advance their partnership”: Beijing continues to cover Moscow – for now
Just last week, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi underscored Beijing’s commitment to the Kremlin. The “common commitment to everlasting friendship and mutually beneficial cooperation” is extremely relevant and important, he stressed at a press conference on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress. Since the start of the Ukraine war, China has avoided calling Russia’s attack as such and thereby identifying Moscow as the aggressor. Instead, it has consistently shown sympathy for Russia’s alleged security concerns in the region. At the same time, the State Department claims that NATO and the US escalated the conflict. For a few days, Beijing has even been spreading the theory, spread by Moscow, that Washington operated virus laboratories in Ukraine.
In recent weeks, Brussels and European officials have tried to persuade Beijing to intervene with Russia to end the war. China’s leader Xi Jinping and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin refer to each other as “friends”. But even a conversation between Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), French President Emmanuel Macron and Xi Jinping last week did not appear to bring about a corresponding change in China’s position in the conflict.
Xi only emphasized that “we must jointly support the Russia-Ukraine peace talks and encourage both sides to maintain the momentum of the negotiations, overcome difficulties, continue the talks and achieve peaceful results,” the meeting summed up from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Chinese government had made similar statements a few days earlier. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Yang Jiechi was also present at the three-way talks.
Russia is running out of foreign exchange
Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov had previously said that Moscow could no longer access foreign exchange reserves worth around 300 billion US dollars because of the sanctions. “That’s about half of the reserves we had,” he told Russian TV channel Rossiya-1.
He pointed out that part of the gold and foreign exchange reserves are held in Chinese yuan and that the West is pressuring Beijing to restrict trade with Moscow. However, the minister was confident that relations with China would continue to improve.
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