Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba has asked China to provide security guarantees for Kyiv, in a lengthy interview containing some of the most direct criticisms of Moscow published by Beijing’s state media.
Western powers and Ukraine have repeatedly urged China to condemn Russia’s invasion as it tries to maintain a supposedly neutral stance, with the US threatening consequences if Beijing provides military or economic support to Moscow.
“Ukraine is studying the possibility of acquiring security guarantees from permanent members of the UN Security Council, including China, and other major powers,” Kuleba was quoted as saying by Xinhua news agency on Saturday.
Photo: AP
“We propose that China becomes one of the guarantors of Ukraine’s security, this is a sign of our respect and trust in the People’s Republic of China,” Kuleba added.
China in 2013 pledged to provide Ukraine with “security guarantees” if it was invaded or threatened with nuclear attack, but appeared evasive on the same issue in the wake of Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24.
Asked about the guarantee last month, a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman suggested that such “security assurances have clear limitations on the content and are triggered under specific conditions,” in reference to a similar UN security resolution on non-nuclear states.
Chinese officials have often blamed NATO for provoking Moscow’s invasion and accused the West of escalating the conflict by sending weapons to Ukraine.
Beijing’s state media has also repeatedly amplified Russian propaganda surrounding the war and largely avoided attributing Ukrainian civilian deaths to Moscow’s military aggression.
Kuleba has only had two calls with Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) since the invasion, while Wang met Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov in China last month and reiterated that cooperation between the two countries has “no limits.”
In the Xinhua interview, Kuleba also accused Russia of having “compromised” Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, saying that the consequences of the global food security crisis would threaten China’s economy.
“We also believe that this war is not in China’s interests,” he was quoted as saying.
His remarks directly referred to Russia’s actions as an “invasion” — a term that Chinese officials and state media have sought to avoid.
“The situation is not escalating because of Ukraine. We are exercising our right to defend ourselves,” he said, in an apparent rebuff of Chinese warnings against other states providing arms to Kyiv.
While Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has not yet spoken publicly with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, he called Russian President Vladimir Putin the day after the invasion.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant