Blinken warns China of risk of new incidents if it helps Russia

the secretary of stateAntony Blinkenemerged on Saturday at China to avoid incidents like the one that led to USA to shoot down a Chinese balloon and warned him about the “consequencesto give help to Russia in the war of Ukraine.

Blinken made these warnings in a meeting with the head of Chinese diplomacy, Wang Yi, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference (Germany).

Relations between the two powers soured after the US military shot down a Chinese balloon overflying its airspace on February 4.

such an incident “it must not happen again”Blinken said in the meeting with Wang, according to a State Department spokesman.

“The secretary made it clear that the United States will not tolerate any violation of its sovereignty,” added. blinken was “very direct and frank”, continuous.

Wang, for his part, “urged the United States to change course and acknowledge and make amends for the damage its excessive use of force caused to US-China relations,” reported the official Chinese news agency Xinhua.

The United States maintains that the Chinese balloon was an espionage device, although Beijing alleges that it was only a meteorological research device that had mistakenly entered that area.

A few hours earlier, Wang had denounced the reaction “hysterical” from the United States upon detecting the globe.

The incident led Blinken to postpone a visit to Beijing.

Warnings about Ukraine

Blinken also alerted Wang to the “implications and consequences” that would have to provide a “material support” Russia in its war against Ukraine.

At the Security Conference, US Vice President Kamala Harris accused Russia of having committed in Ukraine “crimes against humanity”.

According to Harris, Russian forces carried out a “widespread and systematic attack” against the population of the former Soviet republic.

Harris cited cases of summary executions, torture and rape by Russian forces in Ukraine, as well as “the transfer of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian civilians” to Russia.

This is the first time that Washington has formally designated Moscow as responsible for this type of crime since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba welcomed the US position, while acknowledging the difficulty of collecting enough evidence to bring Mr. “specific individuals” what they committed “atrocities”.

The Putin Factor

The French President, Emmanuel Macron, and the German head of government, Olaf Scholz, also participated in the Munich Conference, who called for intensifying support for Ukraine.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg urged “give Ukraine what it needs to win and prevail as a sovereign and independent nation in Europe” and I affirm that the “higher risk” it would be Russian President Vladimir Putin getting his way in the race.

“The biggest risk of all is that Putin wins. If Putin wins in Ukraine, the message to him and other authoritarian leaders will be that they can use force to get whatever they want.” he claimed.

Western countries, led by the United States, have donated billions of dollars in weapons to the Ukrainian government, including artillery and air defense systems, but the Kiev government says it needs more for its counteroffensive to succeed.

For his part, former world chess champion Garry Kasparov assured that Ukraine’s victory in the war is the “prerequisite for democracy in Russia”, and urged the West to continue supporting kyiv.

On the ground, the Russian army claimed this Saturday the capture of Grianykivka, a small village in the Kharkiv region, in northeastern Ukraine.

The day before, the Wagner paramilitary group announced that it had conquered a town near Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine, the scene of one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the conflict.

Source: AFP