Putin Says China Has Concerns Over Ukraine
First time Russian leader acknowledged possible shift in tone from Beijing
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that China had “questions and concerns” over the invasion after reports emerged out of Ukraine that Moscow’s forces were losing ground to a sweeping counteroffensive by Kyiv.
“We highly appreciate the balanced position of our Chinese friends in connection with the Ukrainian crisis,” Putin said at a regional summit in Uzbekistan. “We understand your questions and concerns in this regard. During today’s meeting, of course, we will explain in detail our position on this issue, although we have spoken about this before.”
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WHY IT MATTERS: Beijing gave the green light for Russia to invade Ukraine during the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in February, according to many analysts.
In July, Putin addressed his parliament on Thursday and gave a war update. He said, “Largely speaking, we haven’t even yet started anything in earnest."
Kyiv claimed its troops liberated hundreds of settlements and thousands of square miles in the northeast.
The New York Times reported that Russia is dealing with low troop morale and volunteers are now refusing to serve in combat. The paper noted that Putin is starting to feel pressure at home, and is being urged by some to speed up a decisive victory in Ukraine.
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The Kremlin has not referred to Ukraine as an all-out war, rather a “special military operation.”
Some in Russia are calling on the Kremlin to declare an all-out war on Ukraine.
Oleg Tsaryov, a former deputy of the Ukrainian Parliament who fled in 2014, wrote that Moscow has the right to “plunge Ukraine into the stone age.”
U.S. MOTIVE
Ben Hodges, the former commanding general of U.S. Army in Europe, said in a published interview this week that there’s a chance that modern Russia does not survive the Ukraine War.
Hodges told Newsweek that there’s a potential of "break up" of Russia "as it looks today."
"The combination of battlefield losses and the impact of sanctions on domestic Russia will make it very difficult for the Kremlin to sustain things," he said.
HISTORY: In April, Lloyd Austin, the former Raytheon board member and current Secretary of Defense told reporters after a trip to Ukraine that the U.S. wants to “see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”
Austin said at the time that Russia has already “lost a lot of military capability” and troops.
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“We want to see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability,” Austin said.
Antony Blinken, the co-founder of WestExec Advisers and secretary of state, also said at the time, “The bottom line is this. We don't know how the rest of this war will unfold, but we do know that a sovereign independent Ukraine will be around a lot longer than Vladimir Putin is on the scene.”
Weeks before those comments, President President Joe Biden, who was visiting Warsaw at the time, said Russian President Vladimir Putin "cannot remain in power."
TRENDPOST: The West has decided that the best way to deal with China and Russia is to try to intimidate and isolate them.
What Western leaders can’t seem to understand is that these countries are too important and powerful to be shoved in the corner. Indeed, we forecast that by decade’s end, China’s economy will be larger than America's and its military is already too powerful to confront.. (SUBSCRIBE TO THE TRENDS JOURNAL MAGAZINE FOR EXCLUSIVE CONTENT)
I'm pretty sure China and Russia were shooting at each other in 2018/19 then through the pandemic China was attacking India so I don't understand with that AND the covid release countries are lining up to work with China in any capacity.
Russia (Putin) has been handling this most delicately, but now the gloves are off.