According to consistent media reports, according to US government officials, Russia asked China for military and economic aid after the start of the war in Ukraine. The government officials, who were not named, did not provide any information on what weapons or ammunition Moscow was hoping to get from Beijing. It also remained unclear how or whether China reacted to the inquiries, as reported on Sunday by the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Financial Times, among others. Russia has also asked for economic support to limit the impact of the sanctions, it said.
Communist China has so far tried to maintain a more neutral stance in the conflict over Ukraine. Direct support for ally Russia is likely to bring China into conflict with supporters of Ukraine – and these Western states represent the lion’s share of the global economy.
The consistent media reports came a day ahead of a scheduled meeting between US President Joe Biden’s National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, and China’s top foreign policy official, Yang Jiechi, in Rome on Monday. According to US information, it should also be about the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.
The US government has repeatedly warned China and Chinese companies not to help Russia circumvent sanctions. In such a case, Chinese companies themselves could become the target of US punitive measures, it said.
Sullivan told CNN on Sunday that the government is “closely monitoring” the extent to which China is providing “material or economic support” to Russia. “That’s one of our concerns,” he said. However, the US government made it clear to Beijing that the US would not stand idly by if a country were to compensate Russia for the economic damage caused by the sanctions.
Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov had previously said that Moscow could no longer access foreign exchange reserves worth around 300 billion US dollars because of the sanctions. “That’s about half of the reserves we had,” he told Russian TV channel Rossiya-1 on Sunday. He pointed out that part of the gold and foreign exchange reserves are held in Chinese yuan and that the West is pressuring Beijing to restrict trade with Moscow. However, the minister was confident that relations with China would continue to improve.