Tag: Russian Invasion of Ukraine (2022)

China Will Send an Envoy to Russia and Ukraine to Help Negotiate an End to the War

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A Chinese government envoy will visit Ukraine and Russia next week in an attempt to help negotiate an end to the war, a Chinese government spokesman said on Friday. China had announced its intention to send the official, Li Hui — the government’s special representative for Eurasian affairs — after a phone call last month between its top leader, Xi Jinping, and Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. Beijing had said that Mr. Li would “conduct in-depth communication with all parties” to try to reach a “political settlement.” Beijing has been trying…

China Does an Awkward Dance with Europe Over Russia-Ukraine War

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China’s top diplomat set out on a three-nation trip Tuesday to persuade European leaders that they can do business with Beijing, even as the Chinese tried to keep faith with their “unlimited partnership” with a Russia that has plunged Europe into war. But arriving in Berlin, Foreign Minister Qin Gang was quickly confronted about the war in Ukraine. “Neutrality means taking the side of the aggressor, and that is why our guiding principle is to make it clear that we are on the side of the victim,” the German foreign…

China’s Xi and Ukraine’s Zelensky Hold Talks

Chin@Strategy

Two months after issuing a vague plan for ending the war in Ukraine, China’s leader, a close ally of Vladimir V. Putin, on Wednesday acceded to repeated requests from the Ukrainian president to talk. The one-hour telephone discussion between China’s Xi Jinping and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was the first known contact between the two leaders since Russia invaded Ukraine last year. China’s official account of the discussion was notable for its omission of two words: “Russia” and “war.” It referred instead to the need for a “political settlement…

A Chinese Ambassador’s Comments on Ex-Soviet States Draw Ire

Chin@Strategy

France summoned the Chinese ambassador to Paris, Lu Shaye, on Monday to explain his controversial remarks on French television questioning the sovereignty of post-Soviet nations. The Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, said that they would also send for China’s envoys to the three countries to discuss the matter. China’s Foreign Ministry tried to repair the damage on Monday, insisting that it recognized the sovereignty of all the former Soviet republics that have declared independence, including Ukraine. “China respects the sovereign status of former Soviet republics after the Soviet Union’s…

China Is on Track to Become Nuclear Superpower, Ushering in New Age

Chin@Strategy

WASHINGTON — On the Chinese coast, just 135 miles from Taiwan, Beijing is preparing to start a new reactor the Pentagon sees as delivering fuel for a vast expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal, potentially making it an atomic peer of the United States and Russia. The reactor, known as a fast breeder, excels at making plutonium, a top fuel of atom bombs. The nuclear material for the reactor is being supplied by Russia, whose Rosatom nuclear giant has in the past few months completed the delivery of 25 tons of…

Blinken and Top G7 Diplomats Stress Unity on Russia and China

Chin@Strategy

Top diplomats from the United States and the rest of the Group of 7 nations closed a three-day meeting in Japan on Tuesday with a forceful statement of unity against new assertiveness by both Russia and China, drawing a firm line on tight cooperation on security as well as economic issues. The show of unity came after a monthslong diplomatic charm offensive by Xi Jinping, China’s leader, in which he made a point of courting European officials in Beijing and trying to peel them away from the United States. The…

Why China’s Leader Hasn’t Called the President of Ukraine

Chin@Strategy

The last time President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, spoke, they celebrated 30 years of diplomatic ties, hailing their “deepening political mutual trust” and their people’s “profound friendship.” That was in January of last year. Less than two months later, Russia, one of China’s closest partners, invaded Ukraine. Mr. Xi has not spoken since to Mr. Zelensky, despite the latter’s repeated requests. And the “sound and stable” relationship they touted seems like a distant memory. The question of when and whether Mr. Xi will speak…

Brazil’s Lula Meets Xi in China as They Seek Path to Peace in Ukraine

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President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil met in Beijing on Friday with China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, and the two leaders declared in a joint statement that negotiation was “the only viable way out of the crisis in Ukraine.” In the statement, they avoided the words “invasion” or “war” and offered few specifics about how to bring Russia or Ukraine to the table after more than a year of war. At the same time, Mr. Lula called on Friday for China’s territorial integrity to be respected with regards…

China’s Rise Relied on the West. Xi Jinping Is Turning Away.

Chin@Strategy

In late 1978, China’s paramount leader Deng Xiaoping set in motion two major policy shifts that would change China and the world order in the decades to come. At a Communist Party meeting in December of that year, the leadership declared that China would turn its focus from political struggle to economic development. Within days, China and the United States announced that they would establish diplomatic relations. These two events marked the end of China as a hermit country where one billion people lived in extreme poverty and the start…

Zelensky Makes Morale-Boosting Trip to Bakhmut

Chin@Strategy

KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, made a rare and defiant trip near the front line on Wednesday, personally thanking soldiers who have been fighting in the devastated eastern city of Bakhmut, which has become a potent symbol of Ukrainian resistance. The trip to the Bakhmut area came on a day when air- and seaborne drones attacked the Russian-occupied peninsula of Crimea and a Russian missile ripped into a nine-story apartment complex in Zaporizhzhia, in the south, killing at least one person and injuring more than 30 others. At…