Direct Breaking news of the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Wide angle China in the face of the conflict in Ukraine: between 'neutrality and propaganda'
The war in Ukraine is in
danger of evolving 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
the Chinese for military help.
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.
The news came a few hours before the United States National Security Advisor,
Jake Sullivan,
and the Politburo member of the Chinese Communist Party
, Yang Jiechi,
who is the one who manages, in practice, relations with Beijing , meet today in Rome.
with Washington (in China official titles mean much less in terms of power than in the West).
The White House's decision to transmit this news to certain media outlets - the first of which was the 'Financial Times' - the Biden team seems to follow the policy, recommended by the military and spies, of
disclosing to public opinion part of information from their intelligence agencies.
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 neighbor to the south.
From Beijing, which still does not condemn the invasion, but has not openly supported Russia's attack either, two Foreign Ministry officials
deny in conversations with this newspaper that they are considering sending weapons to Moscow
to help it evade extensive Western sanctions.
"We have always been clear. We are very concerned about what is happening in Ukraine and
we support a peaceful solution to the crisis.
Our efforts, working together with the international community, are only intended to resolve the crisis soon," they say.
Even in private, Chinese officials avoid talking about war or invasion.
They constantly shy away from those terms.
When US media asked Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, about Russia's request for military aid, he said he
had "never heard of it."
Jake Sullivan, in an interview with CNN on Sunday, warned Beijing that if it provided any kind of help to Moscow, it would face consequences.
"We have communicated to Beijing that we will not
sit idly by
and allow no country to compensate Russia for its losses from economic sanctions," Sullivan said, noting that China already knew that Putin was planning action in Ukraine before for the invasion to occur, although "Beijing may not have understood the full scope of what was planned".
A possible entry of Beijing 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 democracies - including Spain - to the Ukrainian government.
Moscow also announced on Friday that it
considers ships carrying aid to Ukraine war targets.
That threat seems more symbolic than anything else, given that Russia has had a blockade of the Ukrainian coast since the invasion began, so it seems unlikely that any country will 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 is still
clinging to its complicated balancing act.
The Chinese government emphasizes the territorial integrity of all states, defends Ukraine's sovereignty, but repeats over and over again that it
considers Russia's security concerns
about NATO's expansion into Eastern Europe to be legitimate.
Sending weapons to Russia to use against Ukraine would risk that semblance of neutrality in a year when President
Xi Jinping,
obsessed with the country's stability, 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 haven't 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 aimed at helping an economy in free fall under sanctions and which Bank of America says could suffer a 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 them guaranteeing the supply of these raw materials to Beijing.
Among the companies that China could enter capital with are gas giant
Gazprom and Rusal,
the world's second-largest aluminum producer.
In all those cases, the buyers would be Chinese state-owned companies.
Two of China's largest state-owned banks are
restricting financing for purchases of Russian raw materials.
Beijing regulators 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 pointed out.
"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 one,
and, furthermore, 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, as it depends on exports. raw material.
While China grew by an average of 6.2% between 2014 and 2020, Russia barely reached a minuscule 0.4%.
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