Tag: Russia

Putin Plans China Visit as a Russian Leader Joins a North Korea Celebration

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As part of Russia’s ongoing efforts to strengthen ties with Asian allies, President Vladimir V. Putin will travel to a conference in China in October, while the defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, will join a Chinese delegation at a celebration in North Korea this week, according to Russian state news media. Mr. Putin will meet with Xi Jinping, China’s leader, to discuss bilateral trade and economic cooperation at an international forum, according to Tass, a Russian state news agency. The relationship between China and Russia has deepened during the war…

MI6 chief says China is supporting Russia in Ukraine – video

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During a panel discussion organised by Politico in Prague, the head of MI6, Richard Moore, said China had been assisting Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. ‘The Chinese have lent very heavily in support of Russia since the outset of Ukraine,’ Moore said, adding that Iran and Russia had left themselves little choice but to cultivate ties with Beijing as the isolated states lacked alternatives The Guardian

China complicit in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, says MI6 chief

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The head of MI6 has accused China’s government and its leader, Xi Jinping, of being “absolutely complicit” in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in a rare public address in Prague. Sir Richard Moore, who has been chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service since 2020, also offered comment on the extraordinary mutiny in June by the mercenary Wagner group led by Yevgeny Prigozhin. Shortly before Russia invaded Ukraine, Xi and Vladimir Putin signed a “no limits” partnership between their countries. After the war began, China’s government sought to present itself as…

‘As Long as It Takes’: Biden Adds to Talk of a New Cold War

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President Biden and his national security team have contended since he took office that all the easy, tempting comparisons between this era and the Cold War are misleading, a vast oversimplification of a complex geopolitical moment. The differences are, indeed, stark: The United States never had the kind of technological and financial interdependence with its Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union, that so complicates the increasingly bitter and dangerous downward spiral in the relationship with China. And Mr. Biden’s advisers often argue that Russia is not the Soviet Union. Yes,…

Vetoes in U.N. Security Council Imperil Cross-Border Humanitarian Aid to Syria

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The United Nations Security Council on Tuesday failed to adopt two rival resolutions to extend cross-border aid deliveries into northern Syria from Turkey, effectively cutting off a vital lifeline to about 4.1 million people in opposition-held territories. Russia vetoed a bid put forth by Brazil and Switzerland to extend one resolution for nine months, a compromise from an initial 12-month extension called for by the United Nations and international aid agencies. A second resolution put forth by Russia for a six-month extension was vetoed by Britain, France and the United…

Kremlin denies China’s president urged Putin not to use nuclear arms in Ukraine

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The Kremlin has denied a report that the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, had personally warned his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, against using nuclear weapons in Ukraine. “No, I can’t confirm it,” Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters on Wednesday when asked about a Financial Times report that said Xi delivered the message when he visited Moscow in March. Peskov said the two countries had issued statements at the time on the content of their talks, calling all other reports about Xi’s state visit to Moscow “fiction”. Since the start of…

Russia is more united than ever, Putin tells allies after failed mutiny

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Vladimir Putin has said that Russia remains “united as never before” in the wake of the failed mutiny by the Wagner mercenary group and claimed the country continued to flourish in the face of heavy western sanctions over his invasion of Ukraine. In an address from the Kremlin to a virtual gathering of leaders from the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a group founded by Russia and China to counter western influence, the Russian president attempted to rebuff any suggestion that he had been weakened by last week’s chaotic but short-lived…

China, Myanmar and now Darfur … the horror of genocide is here again | Simon Tisdall

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It’s happening again. In Darfur, scene of a genocide that killed 300,000 people and displaced millions 20 years ago, armed militias are on the rampage once more. Now, as then, they are targeting ethnic African tribes, murdering, raping and stealing with impunity. “They” are nomadic, ethnic Arab raiders, the much-feared “devils on horseback” – except now they ride in trucks. They’re called the Janjaweed. And they’re back. How is it possible such horrors can be repeated? The world condemned the 2003 slaughter. The UN and the International Criminal Court (ICC)…

What Does Russia’s Wagner Rebellion Mean for China?

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Just three months ago, China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, was in Moscow clinking glasses with Vladimir V. Putin and expressing his confidence in the “firm support” the Russian president enjoyed among his people. That confidence is now in question, after the Wagner private military group waged an insurrection in Russia that has shaken Mr. Putin’s image of invulnerability. Close watchers of China say that the mutiny, short-lived as it was, could lead Mr. Xi to hedge a close relationship with Russia that had already exposed Beijing to global criticism and…

Trump says Putin is ‘somewhat weakened’ by aborted mutiny

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Donald Trump, a longtime admirer of Vladimir Putin, said on Thursday that the Russian president has been “somewhat weakened” by an aborted mutiny and that the US should use this moment to negotiate a peace settlement between Russia and Ukraine. “I want people to stop dying over this ridiculous war,” Trump told Reuters in a telephone interview. On Ukraine, Trump did not rule out that the Kyiv government might have to concede some territory to Russia in order to stop the war, which began with Russian forces invading Ukraine 16…