Chinese President Xi Jinping flew into Moscow on Monday where he was expected to press Beijing’s role as a potential peacemaker in the Ukraine war while Russian President Vladimir Putin hoped for support against Western pressure.
Xi will be the first national leader to shake Putin’s hand since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for him on Friday over the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia since his all-out invasion.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping attend a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on 20th March, 2023. PICTURE: Sputnik/Sergei Karpukhin/Pool via Reuters
Moscow said the charge was one of several “clearly hostile displays” while Beijing said it reflected double standards.
Russia is presenting Xi’s trip, his first since securing an unprecedented third term this month, as evidence that it has a powerful friend in its standoff with a hostile West.
“We can feel the geopolitical landscape in the outside world undergoing drastic changes,” Putin said in an article in China’s People’s Daily published on the Kremlin website, adding that he had high hopes for the visit from his “good old friend”.
For Xi, the visit is a diplomatic tightrope.
China has released a 12-point proposal to solve the Ukraine crisis, but at the same time strengthened ties with Moscow.
China has repeatedly dismissed Western accusations that it is planning to arm Russia but says it wants a closer energy partnership after boosting imports of Russian coal, gas and oil.
Western sanctions mean cheaper prices that have saved Beijing billions of dollars.
Russian state television showed Xi arriving at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport on Monday afternoon. He was due to hold “informal” talks with Putin, followed by dinner.
Formal talks are scheduled for Tuesday.
Xi wrote in an article published in Russia that the two countries adhered to the concept of “eternal friendship and mutually beneficial cooperation” and that China’s Ukraine peace proposal, released last month, reflects global views.
“Complex problems do not have simple solutions,” Xi wrote in Rossiiskaya Gazeta, a daily published by the Russian government, according to a Reuters translation from Russian.
A view shows a car of a motorcade transporting members of the Chinese delegation, including President Xi Jinping, upon their arrival in Moscow, Russia, on 20th March, 2023. PICTURE: Reuters
“Clarifications”
Ukraine says a truce would buy Putin time to reinforce ahead of a planned Ukrainian counter-offensive and urged Russia and China to uphold international law as they say they do.
“The first and main point is the capitulation or withdrawal of Russian occupying forces from the territory of Ukraine in accordance with the norms of international law,” Oleksiy Danilov, head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, said shortly before Xi arrived in Moscow.
UKRAINE SAYS EASTERN TOWN OF AVDIIVKA COULD BECOME “SECOND BAKHMUT”
Ukraine said on Monday the eastern town of Avdiivka could soon become a “second Bakhmut”, a small city where its forces have held out against Russian invaders for eight months but risk being fully encircled.
The battle for Bakhmut in the industrial Donbas has been one of the fiercest of the nearly 13-month-old war in Ukraine, drawing comparisons with World War I trench warfare.
A general view shows a car damaged by debris, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Avdiivka, Donetsk Region, Ukraine, on 15th March, 2023, in this screen grab obtained from a video. PICTURE: Donetsk Region Police/Handout via Reuters/File photo.
The commander of Ukraine’s ground forces said last week Moscow’s forces were now trying to fully encircle Bakhmut in an offensive that has made no major breakthroughs.
On Monday, the spokesperson for Ukraine’s Tavria military command said he agreed with an assessment by British Defence Intelligence that Russia was mounting pressure on supply lines to Avdiivka, as it has done around Bakhmut.
“The enemy is constantly trying to encircle the town of Avdiivka. I very much agree with my colleagues from the UK that Avdiivka may soon become the second Bakhmut,” spokesman Oleksiy Dmytrashkivskyi said.
“However, I would like to say that all is not well with the Russian units attacking in this direction,” he added in televised comments.
Ukraine has said Russian forces are taking heavy losses in their offensive in eastern Ukraine. Avdiivka had a peacetime population of more than 30,000. Unlike Bakhmut, it has been a frontline town for many years.
Ukrainian forces were dug in there long before Russia’s full-scale invasion last year, holding the line against Russian-backed militants who took control of swathes of territory in east Ukraine in 2014 after Russian forces seized Crimea.
Avdiivka lies just to the north of the Russian-held city of Donetsk, of which Ukraine lost control in 2014. British Defence Intelligence tweeted on Monday that Russian forces had made “creeping gains” around Avdiivka and said the sprawling Avdiivka Coke Plant was “likely to be seen as particularly defendable key terrain as the battle progresses”.
– PAVEL POLITYUK, Kyiv, Ukraine, Reuters
China’s proposal contains no concrete proposal on how to end the year-long war which has killed tens of thousands of people, destroyed cities and forced millions to flee.
Putin welcomed China’s mediation offer and the Kremlin said he would provide Xi with detailed “clarifications” of Russia’s position, without elaborating. Putin signed a “no limits” partnership with Xi last year shortly before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine to end what he said was a threat to Russia from its moves towards the West.
The US notes that China has declined to condemn Russia and has given it an economic lifeline.
Alongside growing oil and coal deliveries to China, Putin said Russia was helping to build nuclear power reactors there and the two countries were deepening cooperation in space exploration and new technologies.
“Throw away iphones”
As Western pressure on Russia grows, Putin’s administration has told officials to stop using Apple iPhones because of concerns the devices are vulnerable to Western intelligence agencies, a newspaper reported on Monday.
“Either throw it away or give it to the children,” the Kommersant daily quoted a participant of the meeting as saying.
Justice ministers from around the world will meet in London on Monday to discuss support for the ICC and several European Union countries are expected to sign an agreement in Brussels to buy 155 mm artillery shells for Ukraine.
Ukraine has identified the shells’ supply as critical, with both sides firing thousands of rounds every day.
Fierce fighting continued in the eastern Ukrainian town of Bakhmut where Ukrainian forces have held out since last summer in the longest and bloodiest battle of the war.
Giving its regular morning roundup from the front, Ukraine’s military said defenders in Bakhmut, Lyman, Ivanivske, Bohdanivka and Hryhorivka – all towns in the Donetsk region – had repelled 69 Russian attacks in the past day.
“Bakhmut remains the epicentre of hostilities,” it said.
British intelligence said Ukrainian supply lines both west of Bakhmut and west of the town of Avdiivka, further south, were under pressure.
Ukraine’s military said that Russian forces were on the defensive in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions to the south.
Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, which is spearheading the assault on Bakhmut and has suffered heavy losses, plans to recruit some 30,000 new fighters by the mid-May.
In January, the United States assessed that Wagner had about 50,000 fighters in Ukraine, including 40,000 convicts Prigozhin had recruited from Russian prisons with a promise of a pardon if they survived six months.
Ukrainian officials have said that some 30,000 of Wagner’s fighters have deserted or been killed or wounded, a figure that could not be independently verified.
