China denies asking Putin to delay invasion until end of Beijing Olympics

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• China denied asking Russia not to invade Ukraine until after the Beijing Winter Olympics.
• China’s foreign ministry called a Western intelligence report published by the New York Times ‘fake news.’
• China accused Washington of provoking the war by not ruling out NATO membership for Ukraine.

China denounced a New York Times report claiming that Beijing asked Russia to delay invading Ukraine until after the Winter Olympics ended. China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin called it “fake news.”

“We hope the culprit of the crisis would reflect on their role in the Ukraine crisis, take up their responsibilities, and take practical actions to ease the situation and solve the problem instead of blaming others,” Wenbin said Thursday.

“The New York Times report is purely fake news, and such behaviors of diverting attentions and shifting blames are very despicable,” he added.

Wang also repeated China’s accusation that the U.S. provoked the war by not ruling out NATO membership for Ukraine.

The Times reported that top Chinese officials urged senior Russian officials early February not to attack Ukraine during the Winter Games in Beijing. The newspaper cited a credible “Western intelligence report.”

According to the NYT report, Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Feb. 4, before the opening ceremony of the Olympics. The two superpowers issued a joint statement after the meeting. The statement declares “friendship between the two states has no limits, there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation.”

China has supported Russia’s opposition to further NATO expansion, adding that it “respects the sovereignty, security and interests of other countries.”

China is the only major government that has not condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It also opposed imposing financial sanctions on Russia. Instead, Beijing backed Moscow, saying that NATO’s eastern expansion threatened Russia’s security.

On Wednesday, the United Nations General Assembly emergency session voted on a resolution that demanded the halt and withdrawal of Russian forces in Ukraine. China abstained along with 35 other countries, while just five — Belarus, Eritrea, North Korea, Syria, and Russia — voted against it.

“Regrettably, the draft resolution submitted to the General Assembly emergency special session for [the] vote had not undergone full consultations with the whole membership, nor does it take into consideration the history and the complexity of the current crisis,” Wang said of the vote.

“It did not highlight the importance of the principle of indivisible security or the urgency of promoting political settlement and stepping up diplomatic efforts,” he added. “These are not in line with China’s consistent position. Therefore, we had no choice but to abstain in the voting.”

Source: Associated Press