New START, which was reupped at the beginning of the Biden administration, caps the number of deployed nuclear warheads at 1,550 and places other limits on the number of nuclear-capable bombers and launchers.
But after Russia recently declared it would no longer abide by the treaty, and stopped sharing information with the U.S. on its stockpiles, the Biden administration had continued following the pact, until now.
“We have not received any daily notifications from them since that time,” Plumb said.
In Monday’s meeting between diplomats from both countries, “Russia responded that they will not be providing that information,” he continued. “And so as a diplomatic countermeasure, the United States will not be providing that information back.
“We are going to continue to examine what other diplomatic countermeasures are appropriate,” he added, “and what we’re trying to do is balance both responding to Russia’s irresponsible behavior but continuing to demonstrate what we believe [what] a responsible nuclear power’s action should be.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
A man sentenced to two years in prison in a case launched against him after his daughter drew an anti-war picture at school is on the run from the authorities, a spokeswoman for a provincial court told journalists.
Earlier Tuesday, a judge in the town of Yefremov in Russia’s Tula region, south of Moscow, found Alexei Moskalyov guilty of discrediting the Russian army on social media and sentenced him to two years in a penal colony.
Moskalyov was not present at the hearing.
Once the proceedings were over, a court spokeswoman, responding to inquiries as to Moskalyov’s whereabouts, said: “The defendant, Mr. Moskalyov, was not present when the verdict was announced because he fled house arrest last night.”
Her words were met with applause and several cries of “Bravo!” from some of those in attendance.
Formally, Moskalyov was sentenced for two comments he made on social media in which he described Russian soldiers as rapists and Russia’s leadership as “terrorists.”
But Moskalyov’s defense team and rights activists have argued his persecution is in fact retribution for a drawing made by his daughter Masha at school in April last year, when she was 12.
In the drawing, a woman and child stand next to a flag reading “Glory to Ukraine” in the path of a rocket shower coming from the direction of a Russian tricolor flag labeled: “No to war.”
According to an interview given by Moskalyov to independent media before his arrest, Masha’s teacher informed the director of the school, who then got the police involved, triggering a chain of interrogations that he claimed involved threats and beatings.
Moskalyov was eventually detained in early March and his daughter, now 13, taken into state care. While Moskalyov was soon released under house arrest, Masha remains in what the authorities call “a social rehabilitation center” and has been denied any communication with the outside world.
The ruling on Tuesday, though not a surprise, has been decried as a further crackdown on those who oppose Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and described by some as a return to the Stalinist practice of targeting the children of “enemies of the state.” А petition calling for Masha’s release has received more than 140,000 signatures.
Speaking to journalists outside the court on Tuesday, Moskalyov’s lawyer Vladimir Biliyenko said he had been unaware of his client’s plan to flee. He said the last time they saw each other was at a court hearing a day earlier.
In another development, Moskalyov’s supporters on Tuesday attempted to visit Masha at the so-called social rehabilitation institution where she is supposedly being held, only to be told that she was not there.
According to comments from the center’s director cited by independent Russian media, Masha was attending a “culinary tournament” out of town, fueling speculation about her actual location.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
“Tensions are rising,” House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said during an interview on “Fox News Sunday.” “I think this is saber-rattling on the part of Putin.”
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) described Putin as “a dangerous man,” and said the threat demonstrates the need for U.S. leaders — and those vying for leadership — to see that threat as vital to U.S. interests.
Speaking on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Warner said that if American support for Ukraine wavers, Putin could move on to threaten Poland or President Xi Jinping could take U.S. weakness as “more of a green light to potentially take action against Taiwan.”
“Anyone who doesn’t understand that is remarkably naïve, or not understanding the kind of geopolitical challenging times that we live in,” he said.
On Sunday, NATO criticized Russia for what it described as “dangerous and irresponsible” nuclear rhetoric, though a NATO spokesperson said the organization had not seen any changes in Russia’s nuclear posture.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s marathon three-day visit to Moscow was hailed by the Kremlin as the dawn of a new age of “deeper” ties between the two countries, as Russia races to plug gaping holes left in its finances by Western energy sanctions.
But while Vladimir Putin insisted a new deal struck during the negotiations on Wednesday will ensure Russia can weather the consequences of its invasion of Ukraine, analysts and European lawmakers say he’s overestimating just how much Beijing can help him balance the books.
Prior to the full-blown invasion, Russia’s oil and gas sector accounted for almost half of its federal budget, but embargoes and restrictions imposed by Western countries have since created a multi-billion dollar deficit.
With the country’s ever-influential oligarchs estimated to be out of pocket to the tune of 20 percent of their wealth — and industry tycoon Oleg Deripaska warning the state could run out of money as soon as next year — Putin is seeking to reassure them he’s opened up a massive new market.
“Russian business is able to meet China’s growing demand for energy,” Putin declared Tuesday, ahead of an opulent state banquet.
But analysts and Ukrainian officials have been quick to point out that actually stepping up exports of oil and gas to China will be a technical challenge for Moscow, given most of its energy infrastructure runs to the West, not the East.
Putin on Wednesday announced a major new pipeline, Power-of-Siberia 2, that will carry 50 billion cubic meters of gas to China via Mongolia to fix that problem.
But “in reality, it’s pretty unclear what has actually been agreed,” said Jade McGlynn, a Russia expert at King’s College London. “When it comes to terms and pricing, Beijing drives a hard bargain at the best of times — right now they know Russia’s not got a strong hand.”
Details of the financing and construction of the project have not yet been revealed.
And with predictions of a financial downturn swirling, Beijing may not need more energy to power sluggish industries, McGlynn added.
Yuri Shafranik, a former energy minister under Boris Yeltsin who now heads Russia’s Union of Oil and Gas Producers, suggested China’s appetite for natural gas “will certainly increase” in the coming years, and pointed out that Beijing would not have signed a pipeline agreement if it didn’t need the resources.
But, if the Kremlin was hoping to replace Europe as a reliable customer, it may end up disappointed, said Nathalie Loiseau, a French MEP who serves as chair of the Parliament’s subcommittee on security and defense.
“They chose to use energy to blackmail Europe even before the war,” she said. “Now, Russia has to find new markets and must accept terms and conditions imposed by others. China is taking advantage of the situation.”
In a bid to sweeten the terms, Putin invited all of Asia, Africa and Latin America to buy Russian oil and gas in China’s domestic currency, the renminbi, at the close of Xi’s speech on Tuesday. This came after Xi had already indicated at the China-Arab Summit in December in Riyadh that he would welcome the opportunity to trade oil and gas with Saudi Arabia on similar terms.
The outreach is a nod to the 1974 pact between then-U.S. President Richard Nixon and the Saudi kingdom to accept dollars in exchange for oil, which would in turn be spent on Western goods, assets and services. Non-Western nations have, however, been threatening to move away from dollar pricing in energy markets for years to no effect.
Still, Russia’s efforts to peel away from Western-dominated energy markets are unlikely to make much difference to its fortunes in the long run, according to Simone Tagliapietra, a research fellow at the Bruegel think tank.
“What we are seeing is it’s proving extremely difficult for Russia to diversify away from Europe, and they’ve been forced to become a junior partner of China,” Tagliapietra said. “After this, Moscow won’t be an oil and gas superpower as it was before, not just because of sanctions but also because of the green transition.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Western governments are ticked off with TikTok. The Chinese-owned app loved by teenagers around the world is facing allegations of facilitating espionage, failing to protect personal data, and even of corrupting young minds.
Governments in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and across Europe have moved to ban the use of TikTok on officials’ phones in recent months. If hawks get their way, the app could face further restrictions. The White House has demanded that ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, sell the app or face an outright ban in the U.S.
But do the allegations stack up? Security officials have given few details about why they are moving against TikTok. That may be due to sensitivity around matters of national security, or it may simply indicate that there’s not much substance behind the bluster.
TikTok’s Chief Executive Officer Shou Zi Chew will be questioned in the U.S. Congress on Thursday and can expect politicians from all sides of the spectrum to probe him on TikTok’s dangers. Here are some of the themes they may pick up on:
1. Chinese access to TikTok data
Perhaps the most pressing concern is around the Chinese government’s potential access to troves of data from TikTok’s millions of users.
Western security officials have warned that ByteDance could be subject to China’s national security legislation, particularly the 2017 National Security Law that requires Chinese companies to “support, assist and cooperate” with national intelligence efforts. This law is a blank check for Chinese spy agencies, they say.
TikTok’s user data could also be accessed by the company’s hundreds of Chinese engineers and operations staff, any one of whom could be working for the state, Western officials say. In December 2022, some ByteDance employees in China and the U.S. targeted journalists at Western media outlets using the app (and were later fired).
EU institutions banned their staff from having TikTok on their work phones last month. An internal email sent to staff of the European Data Protection Supervisor, seen by POLITICO, said the move aimed “to reduce the exposure of the Commission from cyberattacks because this application is collecting so much data on mobile devices that could be used to stage an attack on the Commission.”
And the Irish Data Protection Commission, TikTok’s lead privacy regulator in the EU, is set to decide in the next few months if the company unlawfully transferred European users’ data to China.
Skeptics of the security argument say that the Chinese government could simply buy troves of user data from little-regulated brokers. American social media companies like Twitter have had their own problems preserving users’ data from the prying eyes of foreign governments, they note.
TikTok says it has never given data to the Chinese government and would decline if asked to do so. Strictly speaking, ByteDance is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, which TikTok argues would shield it from legal obligations to assist Chinese agencies. ByteDance is owned 20 percent by its founders and Chinese investors, 60 percent by global investors, and 20 percent by employees.
There’s little hope to completely stop European data from going to China | Alex Plavevski/EPA
The company has unveiled two separate plans to safeguard data. In the U.S., Project Texas is a $1.5 billion plan to build a wall between the U.S. subsidiary and its Chinese owners. The €1.2 billion European version, named Project Clover, would move most of TikTok’s European data onto servers in Europe.
Nevertheless, TikTok’s chief European lobbyist Theo Bertram also said in March that it would be “practically extremely difficult” to completely stop European data from going to China.
2. A way in for Chinese spies
If Chinese agencies can’t access TikTok’s data legally, they can just go in through the back door, Western officials allege. China’s cyber-spies are among the best in the world, and their job will be made easier if datasets or digital infrastructure are housed in their home territory.
Dutch intelligence agencies have advised government officials to uninstall apps from countries waging an “offensive cyber program” against the Netherlands — including China, but also Russia, Iran and North Korea.
Critics of the cyber espionage argument refer to a 2021 study by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which found that the app did not exhibit the “overtly malicious behavior” that would be expected of spyware. Still, the director of the lab said researchers lacked information on what happens to TikTok data held in China.
TikTok’s Project Texas and Project Clover include steps to assuage fears of cyber espionage, as well as legal data access. The EU plan would give a European security provider (still to be determined) the power to audit cybersecurity policies and data controls, and to restrict access to some employees. Bertram said this provider could speak with European security agencies and regulators “without us [TikTok] being involved, to give confidence that there’s nothing to hide.”
Bertram also said the company was looking to hire more engineers outside China.
3. Privacy rights
Critics of TikTok have accused the app of mass data collection, particularly in the U.S., where there are no general federal privacy rights for citizens.
In jurisdictions that do have strict privacy laws, TikTok faces widespread allegations of failing to comply with them.
The company is being investigated in Ireland, the U.K. and Canada over its handling of underage users’ data. Watchdogs in the Netherlands, Italy and France have also investigated its privacy practices around personalized advertising and for failing to limit children’s access to its platform.
TikTok has denied accusations leveled in some of the reports and argued that U.S. tech companies are collecting the same large amount of data. Meta, Amazon and others have also been given large fines for violating Europeans’ privacy.
4. Psychological operations
Perhaps the most serious accusation, and certainly the most legally novel one, is that TikTok is part of an all-encompassing Chinese civilizational struggle against the West. Its role: to spread disinformation and stultifying content in young Western minds, sowing division and apathy.
Earlier this month, the director of the U.S. National Security Agency warned that Chinese control of TikTok’s algorithm could allow the government to carry out influence operations among Western populations. TikTok says it has around 300 million active users in Europe and the U.S. The app ranked as the most downloaded in 2022.
A woman watches a video of Egyptian influencer Haneen Hossam | Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
Reports emerged in 2019 suggesting that TikTok was censoring pro-LGBTQ content and videos mentioning Tiananmen Square. ByteDance has also been accused of pushing inane time-wasting videos to Western children, in contrast to the wholesome educational content served on its Chinese app Douyin.
Besides accusations of deliberate “influence operations,” TikTok has also been criticized for failing to protect children from addiction to its app, dangerous viral challenges, and disinformation. The French regulator said last week that the app was still in the “very early stages” of content moderation. TikTok’s Italian headquarters was raided this week by the consumer protection regulator with the help of Italian law enforcement to investigate how the company protects children from viral challenges.
Researchers at Citizen Lab said that TikTok doesn’t enforce obvious censorship. Other critics of this argument have pointed out that Western-owned platforms have also been manipulated by foreign countries, such as Russia’s campaign on Facebook to influence the 2016 U.S. elections.
TikTok says it has adapted its content moderation since 2019 and regularly releases a transparency report about what it removes. The company has also touted a “transparency center” that opened in the U.S. in July 2020 and one in Ireland in 2022. It has also said it will comply with new EU content moderation rules, the Digital Services Act, which will request that platforms give access to regulators and researchers to their algorithms and data.
Additional reporting by Laura Kayali in Paris, Sue Allan in Ottawa, Brendan Bordelon in Washington, D.C., and Josh Sisco in San Francisco.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Officials in Kyiv and Berlin condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin’s announcement that Moscow would station tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus.
The Kremlin “took Belarus as a nuclear hostage,” Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, tweeted on Sunday.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office, added that the move was a violation of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, something that Putin denied in his announcement on Saturday. Podolyak tweeted that Putin “is afraid of losing & all he can do is scare [us] with tactics.”
Putin said on Saturday that Russia would construct a storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus by July. He likened the plans to the U.S. stationing its nuclear weapons in Europe, and said Russia would retain control of the nuclear arms stationed in Belarus.
“The United States has been doing this for decades,” Putin was quoted as saying. “They deployed their tactical nuclear weapons long ago on the territories of their allies, NATO countries, in Europe,” he said.
Saturday evening, the German Federal Foreign Office told national media that the decision was akin to a “further attempt at nuclear intimidation.”
“The comparison made by President Putin on the nuclear participation of NATO is misleading and cannot serve to justify the step announced by Russia,” the Foreign Office was quoted as saying.
The Biden administration in the U.S. said it would “monitor the implications” of Putin’s announcement but would not adjust its nuclear weapons strategy.
“We have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture nor any indications Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said. “We remain committed to the collective defense of the NATO alliance.”
Russia used Belarus as a staging ground to send troops into Ukraine for Putin’s invasion. And Moscow and Minsk have maintained close military ties as the Kremlin continues its war on Ukraine.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Saturday called for the “immediate cessation” of the war in Ukraine during a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Erdoğan also “thanked President Putin for his positive stance regarding the extension of the Black Sea Grain Initiative” and added that the two countries “could take further steps” when it comes to economic cooperation, the Turkish presidency’s communications directorate said in a statement on Saturday.
The Black Sea grain deal, which allowed the export of foodstuffs from Ukraine to resume after Moscow’s unlawful invasion of the country blocked several ports, was extended last weekend. The grain agreement was originally signed last summer by Kyiv and Moscow under the auspices of the United Nations.
The Kremlin said in a statement following the Putin-Erdoğan phone call that the two leaders also discussed the situation in Syria.
They emphasized “the need to continue the process of normalizing relations between Turkey and Syria” and “Russia’s constructive role as a mediator,” according to the statement.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that Moscow would station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, Russian state media reported.
Russia will “complete construction of a storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus on July 1,” Putin said, according to a report by Ria Novosti.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has agreed to the deployment, which won’t violate obligations under nuclear nonproliferation agreements, Putin was quoted as saying. Moscow would not transfer control of the nuclear arms to Minsk, according to the reports.
“We agreed with Lukashenko that we would place tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus without violating the nonproliferation regime,” Putin said, according to Tass.
“The United States has been doing this for decades,” Putin was quoted as saying. “They deployed their tactical nuclear weapons long ago on the territories of their allies, NATO countries, in Europe,” he said.
“We have agreed [with Belarus] that we will do the same. I stress that this will not violate our international agreements on nuclear non-proliferation,” Putin said.
Russia has already stationed 10 aircraft in Belarus capable of carrying tactical nuclear weapons, he said.
The U.S. said it would “monitor the implications” of Putin’s plan but would not adjust its nuclear weapons strategy.
“We have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture nor any indications Russia is preparing to use a nuclear weapon,” National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said. “We remain committed to the collective defense of the NATO alliance.”
The development came as intense fighting continued around the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut, which Russia has been trying to capture for months. The Russian forces’ assault on the town has “largely stalled,” the British Defense Ministry said on Saturday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address Saturday evening that Moscow “must lose” in its war of aggression against Ukraine. “We are doing everything possible and everywhere so that Russian revanchism loses in every element of its aggression against Ukraine and the freedom of nations in general,” he said.
“Russia must lose on the battlefield, in the economy, in international relations, and in its attempts to replace the historical truth with some imperial myths,” Zelenskyy said. “It is the full-scale defeat of Russia that will be a reliable guarantee against new aggressions and crises.”
The U.K. Defense Ministry said there was “extreme attrition” on the Russian side around Bakhmut, but that “Ukraine has also suffered heavy casualties” in its defense of the area, which has become a focal point of the war.
Moscow may be shifting its operational focus following “inconclusive results from its attempts to conduct a general offensive since January 2023,” the ministry said.
Gabriel Gavin contributed reporting.
This story has been updated.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
BERLIN — Germany’s Christian Democrats, the country’s largest opposition group, are planning to shift away from the pragmatic stance toward China that characterized Angela Merkel’s 16 years as chancellor, claiming that maintaining peace through trade has failed.
It’s a remarkable course change for the conservative party that pursued a strategy of rapprochement and economic interdependence toward China and Russia during Merkel’s decade and a half in power. The volte-face has been spurred by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and Beijing’s increasingly aggressive stance — both economically and politically — in the Asian region and beyond.
According to a draft position paper seen by POLITICO, the conservatives say the idea of keeping peace through economic cooperation “has failed with regard to Russia, but increasingly also China.” The 22-page paper, which is to be adopted by the center-right Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) parliamentary group in the Bundestag around Easter, outlines key points for a new China policy.
In a world order that is changing after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Chancellor Olaf Scholz last year announced a Zeitenwende, or major turning point, in German security policy. Economy Minister Robert Habeck and Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, in particular, have stressed the necessity of a comprehensive China strategy, an idea already mentioned in the coalition agreement to form Scholz’s government. Their ministries have elaborated two different drafts, but a comprehensive strategy is not yet in sight.
“We realize at this point in time, with some surprise, which is why we prepared and presented this paper, that the German government is significantly behind schedule on key foreign and security policy documents,” said CDU foreign policy lawmaker Johann Wadephul.
The foreword to the position paper states that “the rise of communist China is the central, epochal challenge of the 21st century for all states seeking to preserve, strengthen, and sustain the rules-based international order.” The CDU/CSU parliamentary group is open to working out a “national consensus” with Scholz’s government. That consensus, the group says, must be embedded in the national security strategy and in a European China strategy.
The relationship with China is described in the same triad fashion that wasformulated by the European Commission in 2019 and is in the coalition agreement of the current German government. Under this strategy,the Asian country is seen as a partner, economic competitor and systemic rival.
But the CDU/CSU group’s paper says policy should move away from a Beijing-friendly, pragmatic stance toward China, especially on trade. “We should not close our eyes to the fact that China has shifted the balance on its own initiative and clearly pushed the core of the relationship toward systemic rivalry,” the text states.
Such an emphasis from the conservative group is remarkable given its long-held preference for economic cooperation and political rapprochement toward both China and Russia under Merkel. Before leaving office, for example, Merkel pushed a major EU-China investment deal over the line, though it was later essentially frozen by the European Parliament due to Beijing’s sanctions against MEPs.
“I say to this also self-critically [that] this means for the CDU/CSU a certain new approach in China policy after a 16-year government period,” Wadephul said.
The paper calls for a “Zeitenwende in China policy,” too, concluding that Germany should respond “with the ability and its own strength to compete” wherever China seeks and forces competition; should build up its resilience and defensive capability and form as well as expand alliances and partnerships with interest and value partners; and demonstrate a willingness to partner where it is openly, transparently and reliably embraced by China.
The CDU/CSU papercalls for a European China strategy and a “European China Council” with EU neighbors for better cooperation. A central point is also strengthening reciprocity and European as well as German sovereignty.
“Decoupling from China is neither realistic nor desirable from a German and European perspective,” according to the text.
To better monitor dependencies, the paper proposes an expert commission in the Bundestag that would present an annual “China check” on dependencies in trade, technology, raw materials and foreign trade, with the overall aim of developing a “de-risking” strategy.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Beijing: Chinese President Xi Jinping concluded his state visit to Moscow on Wednesday and vowed to build “an equal, open and inclusive security system” with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to counter the Indo-Pacific strategy pursued by the US.
Xi held an intense round of discussions with Putin after which the leaders signed two joint statements to deepen their “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership of Coordination for the New Era” and “Pre-2030 Development Plan on Priorities in China-Russia Economic Cooperation”.
Xi embarked upon the 3-day Moscow trip ostensibly to broker a peace deal and end the raging conflict in Ukraine, as he sought to push a peace talks plan that elicited a frigid response from the US, Kyiv’s key ally.
The trip, described by Xi as “one of friendship, cooperation and peace,” marked his ninth visit to Russia since he first became the Chinese President in March 2013.
The joint statement issued in Chinese and Russian languages said the two sides expressed serious concern over NATO’s continued strengthening of military security ties with the Asia-Pacific countries, which undermined regional peace and stability.
It said the two sides opposed cobbling together a closed and exclusive bloc structure in the Asia-Pacific region, creating camp confrontation, in an apparent reference to the Quad alliance comprising the US, India, Australia, Japan and AUKUS, consisting of Australia, the UK and the US.
Both sides said the US adheres to the Cold War mentality and pursues the Indo-Pacific strategy, which has a negative impact on peace and stability in the region, it said.
China and Russia are committed to building an “equal, open and inclusive security system” in the Asia-Pacific region that does not target third countries, in order to maintain regional peace, stability and prosperity, it said.
Both countries expressed serious concerns over the consequences and risks of the trilateral security partnership — AUKUS and related nuclear-powered submarine cooperation programmes on regional strategic stability, it said.
The US, India and several other world powers have been talking about the need to ensure a free, open and thriving Indo-Pacific in the backdrop of China’s rising military manoeuvring in the resource-rich region.
China is engaged in hotly contested territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas.
Beijing has also made substantial progress in militarising its man-made islands in the past few years.
On the Ukraine conflict, the joint statement said the Russian side positively assesses the objective and impartial position of the Chinese side on the issue.
Both sides oppose any country or group of countries seeking military, political and other advantages to the detriment of the legitimate security interests of other countries, a veiled dig at the US and EU, which backed Ukraine in resisting Russia’s military aggression.
Russia reiterated its commitment to restarting peace talks soon, which was appreciated by China, it said.
The Russian side welcomed China’s willingness to play an active role in resolving the crisis in Ukraine through political and diplomatic means, it said.
Significantly, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin in his media briefing on Wednesday parried questions on reports that Xi will speak to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy through a video call to further his peace plan.
Under the China-Russia “Plan to Promote the Key Elements of Russian-Chinese Economic Cooperation until 2030,” Putin said both sides have agreed on a package of 80 important bilateral projects in various sectors worth around USD165 billion.
He said Russia is China’s strategic supplier of oil, natural gas, including LNG, coal and electricity, with Russian gas supplies poised to touch at least 98 billion cubic metres by 2030, plus 100 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas.
The relationship between the two nations is built upon trust and cooperation, with bilateral trade hitting a record high of USD 190.27 billion in 2022, up 29.3 percent year-on-year.
China has been Russia’s largest trading partner for 13 consecutive years.
During a one-on-one meeting with Putin on Monday, Xi said it is a strategic choice China has made to consolidate and develop relations with Russia based on its own fundamental interests and prevailing global trends.
