China considering providing "lethal support" to aid Russian invasion of Ukraine, Blin

[Gunny]

Good thing they're just now figuring out who the bad guys are :rolleyes:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/antony-blinken-china-russia-lethal-support-ukraine-face-the-nation/

[Gunny]

Another take:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64695042

[jimnyc]

Yeah, but define "lethal support"?

As in all of the weaponry that we sent Ukraine already?

[Gunny]

Yeah, but define "lethal support"?

As in all of the weaponry that we sent Ukraine already?We aren't trying to isolate Ukraine and not provide support. We ARE trying to isolate Russia and any support.

It's a good guys vs bad guys thing, which is decidedly a one-sided argument. Those who think it's subjective are doomed to failure.

[Gunny]

FTR: if the NYT starts spamming me, they're going to have a whole 'nuther kind of war to cover :angryman:

Today's game is "Who is the hypocritical liar?":rolleyes:

Sorry, but can't take Blinken's word the sky is blue. He and the goon he works for put themselves in question where there should be none. Commies are lying if their lips are moving.

Screw China. Commie Joe of course won't do it, but I'd dare China to support Russia and shut its economy down if it does. These politicians and their lies and playing games get on my f-ing last nerve.



Bristling against U.S. claims that Beijing may be poised to send “lethal support” to help Russia’s war in Ukraine, China accused the Biden administration on Monday of spreading lies and defended its close partnership with Russia.
The remarks, by a spokesman from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, were part of a series of moves by China as the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, tries to keep Russia close — but also repair ties with Western powers. He has sought to preserve relations with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia while casting Beijing as a blameless onlooker in his invasion of Ukraine, trying only to coax Moscow and Kyiv into peace talks.
Over the weekend, the U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, indicated that he had evidence that, behind the scenes, Beijing was tilting toward stronger support for Mr. Putin and “considering providing lethal support to Russia in its aggression against Ukraine.”

Such a step would be a major shift for China, which has defended its broader economic, energy and political ties with Moscow but not supplied it with weapons, ammunition or other battlefield equipment for the invasion. Mr. Blinken said he had warned his Chinese counterpart (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/19/world/europe/us-china-weapons-russia-ukraine.html) that there would be serious consequences were that to occur.

Asked about the accusations from Mr. Blinken and other U.S. officials, Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for the foreign ministry, suggested that, on the contrary, it was the United States that was implicated in bloodshed in Ukraine.

“It’s the U.S., and not China, that has been incessantly supplying weapons to the battlefield, and the U.S. is not qualified to issue any orders to China,” Mr. Wang told a news conference in Beijing. Washington, Mr. Wang added, should “stop shirking responsibility and disseminating fake news. China will continue firmly standing on the side of dialogue and the side of peace.”


Mr. Wang was asked about reports that Wang Yi — China’s most senior foreign policy official — was due to arrive in Moscow after meeting with Mr. Blinken at the Munich Security Conference. Mr. Putin may meet with him in Moscow, according to Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman.
(A report on Monday by Tass, citing another news outlet, incorrectly said that Mr. Wang had already arrived in Moscow.)


U.S. officials are watching Mr. Wang’s trip closely, which comes after the Chinese official spoke in Munich in defense of Beijing’s straddling position on Russia and the war in Ukraine.
“We are deeply concerned by the expanded and extended crisis,” Mr. Wang, the top official, said when asked about the war during a question-and-answer session in Munich. He also hinted that he thought the United States had a geopolitical interest in perpetuating the fighting in Ukraine.
“Some forces may not want to see peace talks materialize,” Mr. Wang said. “They don’t care about the life and death of the Ukrainians, nor the harm to Europe. They may have strategic goals larger than Ukraine itself.”
China and Mr. Xi have been entangled in tensions between the United States and Russia since early last year, even before Russian troops poured into Ukraine.

Back then, Mr. Xi hosted Mr. Putin in Beijing for the opening of the Winter Olympics, and the two authoritarian leaders declared a friendship with “no limits (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/04/world/asia/olympics-beijing-xi-putin.html)” between their countries. Mr. Xi also endorsed Mr. Putin’s grievances against NATO, opposing its possible eastward expansion. Less than three weeks after that, Mr. Putin launched his sweeping attack on Ukraine.

Since then, officials in Beijing have defended their alignment with Russia, while insisting that they want peace in Ukraine and respect its sovereignty. In the eyes of Chinese leaders, their relationship with Russia is an essential counterweight against American power, said Alexander Korolev (https://research.unsw.edu.au/people/dr-alexander-korolev), a senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales in Australia who studies Chinese-Russian relations.


“For China, Russia is a potential ally for its confrontation with the United States, and Xi Jinping will cash his check if there is a conflict between China and the U.S.,” Mr. Korolev said in a telephone interview. “I don’t think Beijing is happy about what Russia is doing, but it cannot afford to lose its only great power strategic partner.”
Even so, if China were to send weapons or any other form of “lethal support” to Russia for the war, that would likely deeply alarm Washington as well as European leaders, jeopardizing Mr. Xi’s efforts to rebuild his country’s connections with the world after three years of pandemic-induced isolation. Since late last year, he has been trying to draw closer to Germany, France and other European countries. He attempted to cool tensions with Washington, until a quarrel this month over a Chinese surveillance balloon shot down over the United States put that effort on hold.
Although the Chinese government has sought to promote negotiations rather than war in Ukraine, Beijing has not taken big diplomatic gambles to try to bring talks about.


Mr. Wang, the senior diplomat, said Beijing would soon issue a position paper detailing a plan for peace. But the paper is likely to affirm Beijing’s longstanding views, rather than offer a new approach, to judge from Mr. Wang’s comments.
“We will reiterate the propositions made by President Xi Jinping,” Mr. Wang told the audience in Munich. “We will also reiterate that nuclear wars must not be fought and will not be won.”
During their meeting in Munich, Mr. Blinken told Mr. Wang, the senior diplomat, about “a growing concern on our part that China is considering providing lethal support to Russia in its aggression against Ukraine,” Mr. Blinken later said (https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-with-martha-raddatz-of-abc-this-week-2/) in an interview with ABC’s “This Week.”

Mr. Blinken said, “I made clear, as President Biden has — almost from day one with President Xi — that that would have serious consequences in our own relationship.”


Mr. Blinken said the aid would consist of weapons and ammunition, but he did not offer specifics, nor did he describe the intelligence that the Biden administration presumably acquired to arrive at this conclusion.
Without more details to go by, it is difficult to judge what “lethal support” the Biden administration believes Beijing might consider providing, several experts said.
One possible concern to Washington may be Chinese-made drones, said Mr. Korolev, the expert on Russia’s relations with China. Beijing’s deepening military ties with Russia, including regular joint exercises and Chinese copies of Russian weaponry meant Chinese suppliers could be familiar with other military technology.
But, Mr. Korolev (https://research.unsw.edu.au/people/dr-alexander-korolev) said, China may see little benefit from wading into the fighting when neither Ukraine nor Russia appears likely to collapse, or emerge as victor, anytime soon.
“China can keep sitting on the fence,” he said. “Even if China decides to support Russia, everything will be done to hide that.”


Drew Thompson, formerly responsible for relations with China under the U.S. Secretary of Defense, said that U.S. officials may have caught wind of Chinese military officials or arms makers discussing possible exports to Russia, and Chinese diplomats may not be aware of those discussions. He noted he was no longer privy to U.S. government internal discussions.
“There does not appear to be a functioning policy coordination process in China,” said Mr. Thompson, now a visiting senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.


https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/20/world/asia/china-russia-us-arms.html

EDIT: Looks like there's different rules to cutting and pasting NYT. This looks like a relationship doomed from the get-go :)

[jimnyc]

So, move is in China's corner. Do they stay with Russia and help arm them? Now the EU states that this will cross a red line.

---

Putin Suspends U.S. Nuclear Treaty, Tells Russians West ‘Wants to Finish Us Forever’

Russian leader Vladimir Putin announced in a nearly two-hour speech on Tuesday the unilateral suspension of the longstanding New START agreement that limits American and Russian nuclear development, describing Western support for Ukraine amid an ongoing Russian invasion as an existential threat to Russia.

Putin also took the time to reiterate his claim that the administration of current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “neo-Nazi” in its ideology and to denounce “perversion” and “spiritual catastrophe” in the West, spending particular time condemning the Anglican Church for allegedly considering “the idea of a gender-neutral God.”

The Russian leader made his remarks during his State of the Nation address, which the Russian constitution requires him to deliver annually. Putin has not delivered the speech for nearly two years, however, since April 2021, and had announced a delay in public appearances – including postponing his traditional end-of-year marathon press conference in December – late last year.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine – which began in 2014 but escalated through a “special military operation” announced on February 24, 2022, to a full-scale national attack on the country, took up most of Putin’s speaking time. Putin insisted that his administration “did everything possible, really everything possible to solve this problem by peaceful means,” but Western powers did not allow Ukraine to accept such a resolution. He did not appear to include Russia’s invasion and colonization of Crimea in 2014, which received no significant response from the administration of then-President Barack Obama, in his analysis of the ongoing invasion of the country.

“I want to repeat this: it was they who unleashed the war, and we used force to stop it,” Putin asserted.

Putin used his speech to announce an end to the New START agreement, a treaty passed under Obama.

“I am forced to announce today that Russia is suspending its participation in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty,” he declared, accusing the United States and the greater West of attempting to eliminate the existence of Russia as a whole.

Rest - https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2023/02/21/putin-suspends-u-s-nuclear-treaty-tells-russians-west-wants-to-finish-us-forever/

[Gunny]

So, move is in China's corner. Do they stay with Russia and help arm them? Now the EU states that this will cross a red line.

---

Putin Suspends U.S. Nuclear Treaty, Tells Russians West ‘Wants to Finish Us Forever’

Russian leader Vladimir Putin announced in a nearly two-hour speech on Tuesday the unilateral suspension of the longstanding New START agreement that limits American and Russian nuclear development, describing Western support for Ukraine amid an ongoing Russian invasion as an existential threat to Russia.

Putin also took the time to reiterate his claim that the administration of current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was “neo-Nazi” in its ideology and to denounce “perversion” and “spiritual catastrophe” in the West, spending particular time condemning the Anglican Church for allegedly considering “the idea of a gender-neutral God.”

The Russian leader made his remarks during his State of the Nation address, which the Russian constitution requires him to deliver annually. Putin has not delivered the speech for nearly two years, however, since April 2021, and had announced a delay in public appearances – including postponing his traditional end-of-year marathon press conference in December – late last year.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine – which began in 2014 but escalated through a “special military operation” announced on February 24, 2022, to a full-scale national attack on the country, took up most of Putin’s speaking time. Putin insisted that his administration “did everything possible, really everything possible to solve this problem by peaceful means,” but Western powers did not allow Ukraine to accept such a resolution. He did not appear to include Russia’s invasion and colonization of Crimea in 2014, which received no significant response from the administration of then-President Barack Obama, in his analysis of the ongoing invasion of the country.

“I want to repeat this: it was they who unleashed the war, and we used force to stop it,” Putin asserted.

Putin used his speech to announce an end to the New START agreement, a treaty passed under Obama.

“I am forced to announce today that Russia is suspending its participation in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty,” he declared, accusing the United States and the greater West of attempting to eliminate the existence of Russia as a whole.

Rest - https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2023/02/21/putin-suspends-u-s-nuclear-treaty-tells-russians-west-wants-to-finish-us-forever/Interesting situation. Putin's BS is for Russia, Belarus and anyone else buying the BS. Thing is, from a certain POV, I don't necessarily disagree with Putin in regard to a decadent, immoral West. We bitch about it all the time. Same time, he's just using it as an excuse. This is about power, money, control and his delusion fo grandeur that he can rebuild the USSR to former "glory".

China's fate is in Pooh's hands. He's hampered by his massive ego which I do no believe reflects the Asian/Chinese philosophy, even when bent toward subversive World domination. Pooh and "subversion" are polar opposites.

Then there is the US pushing China, which goes more back to Pooh's ego than China's global ambition. Pushing both is driving them into each other's arms as a desperate attempt at clinging to thinking they can win. There is no scenario in which either or, nor they win. They lose or we all die. We lose only if we cave.

That's as it stands now. At the rate Biden is selling us out and depleting our stores needed to sustain a wartime economy, that's not guaranteed in the future. This would be the preferred and probably planned Chinese route, minus Pooh's ego.

Putin on the other hand is just a typical, Russian thug. He's just going to smash shit until he gets what he wants or gets squashed.