Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping met Friday on the sidelines of the Beijing Winter Olympics in a show of solidarity amid a spiraling crisis over the Kremlin’s military buildup around Ukraine that could further complicate the diplomatic standoff.
In a rambling joint statement to mark the occasion, Moscow and Beijing espoused shared views on a range of geopolitical issues but avoided mentioning the conflict by name. Instead, they expressed opposition to NATO enlargement and called out “forces representing a minority on the world stage” who “continue to advocate unilateral approaches to solving international problems” — a not-so-subtle dig at the United States.
Xi, who has not met another foreign leader in person in almost two years, said the two sides “firmly support each other in safeguarding their core interests,” according to a summary of the meeting by the state news agency Xinhua. Putin announced a deal to supply China with more gas via a new pipeline.
Just hours before their meeting, the United States warned China against helping Russia dodge potential sanctions related to the crisis in Ukraine.
Washington and its allies “have an array of tools” that can be deployed against “foreign companies, including those in China” that attempt to evade potential punitive measures against Russia, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters Thursday. He declined to offer specifics, but Western officials have floated penalties on Russian financial institutions, curbs on U.S. technology exports and personal sanctions against Kremlin leaders and their associates.
Moscow has massed more than 100,000 troops near Ukraine’s borders, raising fears of further Russian aggression. The West has sought to deter an incursion into Ukraine by sending military supplies and troops to the region, as well as publicly flagging potential operations that may be attempted by the Kremlin to provide an excuse to send its forces into Ukraine.
U.S. officials allege, for example, that the Kremlin is considering filming a fake attack against Russian territory or Russian-speaking people by Ukrainian forces as a pretext to again invade its smaller western neighbor. The Kremlin rejected the claim.
Analysts worry that Chinese support could embolden the Kremlin. The last time China hosted the Olympics, in the summer of 2008, Russia invaded Georgia as Putin watched that event’s Opening Ceremonies in Beijing.
China and Russia have grown closer in the years since. Beijing is frustrated by Western criticism of its human rights abuses against ethnic minorities and its aggressive stance on Taiwan, while Moscow has voiced deep concern about the expansion of NATO into what Putin sees as Russia’s traditional sphere of influence.
The lengthy joint statement published Friday amounted to a rhetorical challenge to the U.S.-led order, mentioning Russia and China’s status as “world powers” and offering joint positions on a range of issues, including opposition to NATO enlargement and the trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United States, and the United Kingdom (AUKUS), among other issues.
Diplomatic efforts to resolve the Ukraine crisis have been deadlocked in part over Russia’s ultimatum that NATO permanently bar Kyiv from entering the alliance; the West has refused to budge from its open door policy.
The relationship between China and Russia has always been, and remains, complicated.
A crisis in Ukraine that triggers Western sanctions on Russia makes Moscow more dependent on China, giving Beijing additional leverage, Ryan Hass, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who served in President Barack Obama’s National Security Council, wrote on Twitter.
But China also has good ties with Ukraine and fears that a Russian attack on Kyiv would prompt the United States to beef up defenses in Asia, Hass wrote.
The potential fabricated attack video that U.S. officials said Moscow was considering could include “graphic scenes of a staged false explosion with corpses,” the Biden administration warned. Russian intelligence is intimately involved in the efforts, according to a senior Biden administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity under rules set by the administration.
Russian officials denied the alleged false flag operation. “We are not surprised by the new ‘creative’ scenario,” the Russian Embassy in Washington said in a statement that also referenced the flawed intelligence presented by the George W. Bush administration in the run-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
The Biden administration’s claims were met with pushback due to the lack of specificity and evidence. But Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters the alleged Russian disinformation effort was “right out of their playbook.”
Price, the State Department spokesman, said the Biden administration called out the purported video plan publicly to prevent Russia from using it as a pretext to attack Ukraine.
The U.S. allegations were backed by British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, who wrote on Twitter that Washington has offered “shocking evidence of Russia’s unprovoked aggression.”
In recent weeks, top Kremlin officials have claimed that Ukraine, emboldened by the West’s diplomatic support and arms shipments, could attempt to militarily seize back Crimea. Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and has supported separatists in Ukraine’s east.
Ukrainian leaders have said they seek to regain full control of Crimea and Ukraine’s contested eastern territories. Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, said on Ukrainian television this week that Kyiv would “do everything” to achieve that goal, but he added that it was impossible to say how such a plan would be executed.
Diplomatic efforts to de-escalate the Ukraine crisis continued Thursday. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in Kyiv to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, repeated his offer to host peace talks. The Kremlin said Putin would meet French President Emmanuel Macron on Feb. 7 and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Feb. 15.
U.S. officials, meanwhile, announced visa restrictions on Belarusian officials whom they accused of “serious, extraterritorial counter-dissident activity.” They highlighted efforts to crack down on Belarusian athletes who spoke out against President Alexander Lukashenko, a Putin ally who has been hosting Russian troops for a military exercise. Western officials fear that those same Russian troops could be part of an attack into neighboring Ukraine.
Jeong reported from Seoul. Rauhala reported from Brussels. Robyn Dixon and Mary Ilyushina in Moscow, David L. Stern in Kyiv, Ukraine, Lily Kuo in Taipei, Eva Dou in Washington, Amy Cheng in Seoul, and Rick Noack in Paris contributed to this report.