Senior Biden administration officials had half a dozen meetings with top Chinese representatives in an effort to get them to urge Russian President Vladimir Putin not to invade Ukraine.
The meetings included the foreign minister and ambassador, and they rejected the pleas, arguing they didn’t believe an invasion was going to happen.
Putin announced the beginning of the operation early Thursday morning local time, and shortly thereafter, troops entered Ukraine from Belarus going south toward Kyiv, Crimea heading north, and from the east. The troops headed to Kyiv have hit some unexpected resistance, a senior defense official told reporters on Friday.
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Back in December, the U.S. received intelligence claiming that the Chinese government shared the information with the Kremlin and that Beijing said it wouldn’t hamper Russia’s efforts.
The Chinese have been a lifeline of sorts for Russia as it becomes a pariah to the Western world.
“Russia and the PRC also want a world order,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said Wednesday. “But this is an order that is and would be profoundly illiberal. … It is an order that is, in many ways, destructive rather than additive.”
China and Russia have made a show of their alignment over the last several years, culminating in the release this month of a communique that outlined a wide range of plans for economic and diplomatic cooperation, including the Kremlin’s support for Beijing’s claim to sovereignty over the island democracy of Taiwan and Chinese President Xi Jinping’s support for restrictions on NATO activities in Europe.
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“The Feb. 4 statement that Xi and Putin put out was — certainly, we took [it] as tacit approval for what Mr. Putin is doing,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters at the time.
A day before Putin greenlighted the invasion, Hua Chunying, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said at a news conference that the United States was “the culprit of current tensions surrounding Ukraine,” demonstrating China’s position.
