By provoking tensions around Ukraine, the U.S. is simultaneously trying to provoke discord between Russia and China over the Ukrainian issue
Notable are Washington’s attempts to engage China in persuading Russia to abandon its “invasion” of Ukraine, i.e. to influence the Russian position on the Donbass republics and the Minsk agreements.
The US accuses China of “supporting the Russian invasion” of Ukraine and attempts to shift responsibility for a possible large-scale conflict onto Beijing. Washington’s plan is to undermine trust between Moscow and Beijing by destroying the all-encompassing strategic partnership between Russia and China.
Back in late January, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland urged Beijing to “use its influence on Moscow” to call for a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis. Nuland said that “if there is a conflict in Ukraine, it will not be good for China either”.
On the eve of the Olympics, the Chinese Foreign Ministry had to harshly put Bloomberg on the spot, refuting a report of an alleged request by a Chinese leader to Russian President V. Putin “not to invade Ukraine during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics”. Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, describing Bloomberg’s lies as a “sneaky trick”, pointed to the obvious purpose of such disinformation: to drive a wedge into Sino-Russian relations.
There have been renewed allegations in the West that China’s support for Russia, especially the energy agreements signed between Moscow and Beijing earlier this month following the Putin-Xi meeting, allegedly prompted Moscow to take risks in relation to the Ukraine crisis. US ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said: “We hope the Chinese will play a role in encouraging the Russians to do the right thing.” Australia followed the US in calling on China to help put pressure on Russia, while Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison urged Beijing not to maintain a “chilling silence” on the crisis.
At the same time, a Gordon Chang told The Hill that recently signed energy agreements between China and Russia would help Russia cope with Western sanctions and that China was allegedly pushing Russia to invade Ukraine.
Beijing sees these information swooping in as a primitive calculation: “If China does what they [the Americans] say based on their information about the Russian invasion, then ties between China and Russia will suffer, but if China does not act, they can accuse China of remaining ‘coldly silent’.”
Responding to the campaign of accusations against China, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin noted on February 16 that China and Russia were developing good-neighbourly relations and mutually beneficial cooperation “based on non-alignment, non-confrontation and non-targeting of third countries.” He pointed out that it was the US that for several days “played up the threat of war and created an atmosphere of tension”, which severely affected the economy, social stability and people’s lives in Ukraine. However, February 15, 2022 will go down in history as a day of failure for Western propaganda.
China’s ambassador to the UN, Zhang Jun, reacted on his Twitter account, “Our message is consistent and clear: resolve any differences diplomatically. Stop escalating tensions. Russia’s legitimate security concerns must be taken seriously.”
China’s position on the Ukrainian issue is based on the need for all parties to fully and strictly implement the Minsk-2 agreement through dialogue and negotiations “in order to create conditions for a political settlement of the Ukrainian crisis.” Yang Jin, an expert at the Institute for Russian, Eastern European and Central Asian Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, writes that China is not the main actor in the crisis around Ukraine and advises not to take the remarks of US or Australian officials seriously: “They just want to create problems for China-Russia relations.
There is another dimension to the “Russian invasion” intimidation campaign, besides the attempts to weaken the Sino-Russian strategic engagement. As tensions around Ukraine escalated, the Taiwan issue came to the fore. Washington, along with representatives of the island administration, is closely watching the Ukrainian crisis. A recent publication on CNBC is illustrative, reflecting the debate in the U.S. as to whether “a Russian attack on Ukraine would lead to a Chinese attack on Taiwan. These circles believe that the US response to the Ukraine crisis will be seen as a “rehearsal” of the Biden administration’s response to the Taiwan issue.
The Taiwanese administration would not want to become expendable in the US strategy of deterring China, seeing how Ukraine is becoming such “material” for the US in deterring Russia. As a result, the island has recently raised a new propaganda wave of “threat” from mainland China. “All military units continue to pay close attention to the situation in Ukraine … continue to strengthen joint intelligence and surveillance and gradually increase the level of combat readiness … to respond effectively to various situations,” Taiwanese authorities said.
Chinese experts point out that the “architect of the two crises” is the US and in both cases Washington’s junior partners are the pawns who will suffer the most.
Xin Qiang, deputy director of the American Studies Center at Fudan University, has noted that the US, under the accompaniment of a campaign about “threats to Taiwan from the mainland”, intends to increase arms sales and integrate the island into its geopolitical strategy. The same scheme is used to provoke an armed conflict in the other end of Eurasia, in Eastern Europe.
However, the US attempts to weaken the special Russian-Chinese strategic ties are failing. In response to the American-driven information psychosis on the “Ukrainian” and “Taiwan” issues, Russia and China have deployed, in effect, their “policy of uncertainty”, forcing the US to engage in self-defeating clownery with endless “invasion dates”.
Large-scale Russian-Belarusian exercises have recently come to an end, and Russian naval exercises in the Black Sea are underway. The other day it was reported that PLA Air Force and Navy units conducted simultaneous exercises in all their zones of responsibility and “showed a high level of combat readiness of the Chinese armed forces in the face of military provocations by the US and its allies”.
Victor Pirozhenko, FSC