The war in Ukraine runs the danger of developing into a world war. That is what seems to be deduced from the United States complaint that, given the failure of the invasion, the Russian Government has asked military aid to the Chinese. Washington has not wanted to specify what kind of material Moscow has requested from Beijing, or under what conditions. According to some sources from the US Public Administration, the first request for arms took place on the same day of the invasion, on February 24.
However, China He denied this Monday that Russia he would have asked for military help to invade Ukraine. “It is completely untrue, it is pure misinformation with malicious intent. China has clearly and consistently stated its position on the crisis in Ukraine. We play a constructive role and assess the situation impartially and independently. Denigrating China’s position is not something acceptable,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a news conference today. “It is imperative that all parties limit and defuse tensions and not add fuel to the fire,” he added.
The president of the United States, Joe Biden, could travel to Europe in the coming weeks to discuss with NATO allies the situation created by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which threatens to turn into a conflict involving the entire continent. This has been declared by the White House, which, however, has clarified that a final decision has not yet been made. The announcement took place when the National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, was meeting in Rome with the head of China’s relations with the United States, the member of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party Chang Yiechi.
The meeting ended at a quarter to six continental European time, without any of the parties making any statements.
The decision of the White House to transmit this news to certain media outlets – the first of which was the ‘Financial Times’ – of the Biden team seems to follow the policy, recommended by the military and spies, of disclose part of the information from their intelligence agencies to the public. This strategy has given excellent results in the case of Ukraine, by predicting, against the opinion of countries like Germany and France and the denial of Russia, that Vladimir Putin was going to attack his southern neighbor.
From Beijing, which still does not condemn the invasion, but has not openly supported Russia’s attack either, two Foreign Ministry officials they deny in conversations with this newspaper that they are considering sending weapons to Moscow to help him evade sweeping Western sanctions.
“We have always been clear. We are very concerned about what is happening in Ukraine and we support a peaceful resolution of the crisis. Our efforts, working together with the international community, are only aimed at resolving the crisis soon,” they say. Even in private, Chinese officials avoid talking about war or invasion. They constantly shy away from those terms.
When Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, was asked by the US media about Russia’s request for military aid, he said: “never heard of that.” Jake Sullivan, in an interview with CNN on Sunday, warned Beijing that if it provides any help to Moscow, it will face consequences.
“We have communicated to Peking that we will stand idly by and we will allow no country to compensate Russia for its losses from economic sanctions,” Sullivan said, noting that China already knew that Putin was planning some action in Ukraine before the invasion occurred, though “Peking may not have been involved.” understood the full scope of what was planned”.
A possible entry of Peking into the war as a supplier of military equipment to Russia would be a qualitative leap in the conflict. The information from the US, moreover, comes only four days after the Joe Biden government refused to deliver Polish MiG-29 fighter-bombers to Ukraine, for fear that Vladimir Putin would consider it an escalation of the war.
Immediately after Washington made public its opposition to this operation, Russia began bombing western Ukraine, sometimes just 10 kilometers from the border with Poland, one of the countries that is acting as a ‘bridge’ in aid of the armed forces. democracies – including Spain – to the Ukrainian government. Moscow also announced on Friday that consaw the ships carrying aid to Ukraine as war targets. That threat seems more symbolic than anything else, given that Russia has been blockading the Ukrainian coast since the invasion began, so it seems unlikely that any country is going to deliver weapons to the Ukrainians that way. Yesterday, several US senators visiting Poland called for the delivery of the planes to take place.
The Asian giant continues clinging to his complicated balancing act. The Chinese Government emphasizes the territorial integrity of all states, defends the sovereignty of Ukraine, but repeats over and over again that sees Russia’s security concerns as legitimate on NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe. Sending weapons to Russia for use against Ukraine would risk that semblance of neutrality in a year in which the president Xi Jinping, obsessed with the country’s stability, he is seeking an unprecedented third term at a major Chinese Communist Party (CCP) congress to be held in the fall.
After the war in Ukraine began and the rain of international sanctions that fell on Moscow, the Putin government has tried to seek some support, at least financially, from China. But they have not found their neighbor’s door as open as they expected. A few days after the invasion, the Chinese government lifted restrictions on grain imports from Russia, in a move clearly intended to help an economy in free fall from sanctions and which, according to Bank of America, could suffer a further downturn. GDP collapse of 13% this year.
Last week, the Bloomberg news agency reported that China and Russia were negotiating the entry of the Chinese state into the capital of large Russian energy, mining and agricultural companies in exchange for the latter guaranteeing the supply of these raw materials to Beijing. Among the companies whose capital China could enter are the gas giant Gazprom and Russia the second largest aluminum producer in the world. In all these cases, the buyers will be Chinese state-owned companies.
Two of China’s largest state-owned banks are restricting financing for purchases of Russian raw materials. Beijing regulators have reportedly asked insurance companies to carry out internal controls on the exposure of their investment and business portfolios in Russia. In another example, Russia’s air transport agency has said they are considering various alternatives for supplying aircraft parts after China refused to supply them amid sanctions.
Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said this weekend that the sanctions had deprived Moscow of access to $300 billion of its $640 billion in gold and foreign exchange reserves. “We have part of our gold and foreign exchange reserves in the Chinese currency, in yuan. And we see what pressure Western countries put on China to limit mutual trade with China. Of course, there is pressure to limit access to those reserves,” Siluanov said.
“But I think that our partnership with China will still allow us to maintain the cooperation that we have achieved, and not only maintain it, but also increase it in an environment where Western markets are closing,” the Russian minister said. Siluanov’s comments marked Moscow’s clearest statement yet that it will seek help from China, its biggest export market after the European Union, to cushion the blow. From Beijing, very critical of Western sanctions, they have maintained in recent days that economic and trade relations with Russia will continue as normal.
A rapprochement between Russia and China would literally be a bear hug for the first of these countries. The Chinese economy is ten times larger than the Russian economy. and, in addition, much more developed, since it has an important technological component while that of the country led by Vladimir Putin is typical of a developing nation, depending on the export of raw materials. While China grew by an average of 6.2% between 2014 and 2020, Russia barely reached a minuscule 0.4%.
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