Kyiv/Beijing/Moscow/Washington: Amidst claims by Ukrainian authorities that the United States would soon impose a new package of sanctions against leading Russian banks and people close to President Vladimir Putin, China came out strongly against the US sanctions today. It claimed that by increasing “unilateral” sanctions on Russia since the conflict broke out, Washington was coercing other countries to take sides.
Ukraine today also quoted an unnamed US administration official saying that a ban on new investments in the Russian Federation is also being imposed. Later in the day, the US President Joe Biden announced imposition of severe and immediate economic cost on Russia for its atrocities in Ukraine, including in Bucha. It announced “devastating economic measures to ban new investment in Russia, and impose the most severe financial sanctions on Russia’s largest bank and several of its most critical state-owned enterprises and on Russian government officials and their family members.”
China hit hard at the US saying if it was serious about easing the situation in Ukraine, “it should stop adding fuel to the fire, stop imposing sanctions, stop coercive words and deeds and truly commit to promoting peace talks”.
Beijing noted that in the past eight years from 2014 till now, a group of countries, led by the United States, imposed 8,068 sanctions on Russia, which overtakes Iran as the most sanctioned country in the world. Since February 22 this year, 5,314 new sanctions have been slapped on Russia, it pointed out.
Chinese foreign ministry today also referred to the Russian Security Council Deputy Secretary Mikhail Popov who had claimed that in a contrasting move to its pressuring of European countries to not buy Russian oil, the US increased crude oil supplies from Russia by 43 per cent, or 100,000 barrels per day, over the past week and allowed its companies to import mineral fertilizers from Russia.
“The ongoing war and sanctions have incurred an influx of refugees, capital outflow and energy shortage in Europe, but enabled the US to have profited and made a fortune from that,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told reporters in Beijing today.
China also warned the USA over the latter’s approval of up to $95 million worth of military-technical support and related equipment to the “Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States”, and stated that it will take firm and forceful measures to resolutely safeguard its sovereignty and security interests.
“US arms sales to China’s Taiwan region seriously violate the one-China principle and the three China-US joint communiques, especially the August 17 Communique, seriously undermine China’s sovereignty, security and development interests, and severely harm the China-US relations and peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait. China rejects and deplores this,” Lijian said.
Referring to the Russian claim that evidence of the civilian killings in Bucha in Ukraine was staged by the West, the Chinese foreign ministry while describing the reports and images of civilian deaths in Bucha as “deeply disturbing”, demanded that the relevant circumstances and specific causes of the incident must be verified and ascertained.
“Humanitarian issues shouldn’t be politicized. Any accusations should be based on facts. Before the full picture is clear, all sides should exercise restraint and avoid unfounded accusations. China supports all initiatives and measures conducive to alleviating the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine and stands ready to continue working with the international community to prevent harm to civilians,” Lijian said.
The Bucha massacres have snowballed into a major confrontation point between Russia and the West. Yesterday the European Union announced the expulsion of 19 diplomats from the Permanent Mission of the Russian Federation to the European Union in Brussels. Responding to it, Russia today stated that “the EU bears full responsibility for the consequences of this destructive action”.
Also read: Reports of civilians’ killings in Ukraine “more than credible”: Blinken
Russia today claimed that the Russian military was doing all it can to avoid civilian victims and accused the Kyiv regime of “shelling residential neighbourhoods, destroying its own people and leading the country into a humanitarian disaster with support from its American and European curators that are building up lethal arms supplies to Ukraine”.
Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, told media persons in Moscow today that Ukrainian nationalists were focusing on “provocations, disinformation and fabricated episodes” that are aimed at accusing Russia of war crimes. “We saw similar staged shows in Syria several years ago and not just in Syria and not just several years ago,” she said.
Zakharova reiterated that on April 3, 2022, the Ukrainian authorities in Bucha faked the alleged murder of civilians by the Russian military. “After checking the relevant reports and comparing information the Russian Defence Ministry promptly came up with a detailed rebuttal. Until March 30, 2022, when Bucha was controlled by the Russian military and up to and including April 3 when they left, local residents freely moved around the city and used mobile phones,” she said. Elaborating, she said that he Russian military delivered to the people of Bucha and other places in the Kyiv Region 452 tonnes of humanitarian aid. “Not a single civilian was hurt by a violent attack while Bucha was under the control of the Russian armed forces. There has been no information to this effect. The roads from Bucha to other places, including Kyiv, were not blocked. In the process, Ukrainian troops shelled round the clock on the southern outskirts of the city, including its residential areas (as they always do everywhere). They used large calibre artillery, tanks and multiple rocket launchers for this purpose.”
Earlier yesterday, the Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov had claimed that in the past few days, the propaganda machine of the West and Ukraine had “focused exclusively on fueling hysteria over video taken, as we understand, by the military and security service of Ukraine in the city of Bucha, Kiev (Kyiv)Region”.
Reiterating that assertions of “war crimes” committed by the Russian Armed Forces in the course of the special military operation have “repeatedly been proved false”, Lavrov claimed Russia viewed the charges against its forces in Bucha as a pretext “to torpedo” the ongoing negotiations with Ukraine “at a time when some light, however dim, has appeared at the end of the tunnel”.
Lavrov said that at the talks in Istanbul on March 29, 2022, Ukrainian representatives set forth in writing their vision for a treaty on Ukraine’s status and security guarantees for the first time during contacts between our delegations.
“For the first time ever, the Ukrainian side has put on paper that it is prepared to declare Ukraine a neutral, non-aligned and non-nuclear state, and to refuse to deploy weapons from foreign states on its territory or to conduct exercises on its territory with the participation of foreign military personnel, unless they are approved by all guarantors of the future treaty, including the Russian Federation. The security guarantees envisaged by the treaty are a step toward everyone realising that the negotiations need to completely rule out NATO’s eastward expansion, primarily to Ukraine, and to ensure indivisible security in Europe,” Lavrov stated. He claimed that the Ukrainian side itself included in this draft of the main clauses of the treaty a provision saying that the security guarantees that will be provided to Ukraine in the event of an agreement will not apply to Crimea and Donbass. “This is also a sign of significant progress in terms of Kiev making a realistic assessment of the status of these territories,” he said.
Russia said that it was in accordance with the Istanbul agreements and as a gesture of goodwill, that it decided to de-escalate the situation on the ground, primarily, in the Kiev and Chernigov regions.
However, Ukraine today stated that Russia’s original invasion plan aimed in particular at simultaneous seizure of Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa had failed and following military defeats on the ground, Russia had to withdraw its forces from the Kyiv, Chernihiv and Sumy regions. In other areas, they are being regrouped and replenished in order to renew the advance into Ukraine’s territory, Ukraine’s ministry of foreign affairs claimed. It further claimed that faced with military defeats, losses of personnel and vigorous resistance, the Russian troops began indiscriminate attacks on Ukrainian cities with missile strikes and heavy artillery. It took out a press release today that claimed:
- Documents and maps seized by Ukrainian troops from Russian prisoners of war, as well as intercepted communications, confirm that bombardments and shelling of residential areas have deliberate character;
- The residential areas of such cities as Kharkiv, Mariupol, Chernihiv, Sumy, and many others, are intensively shelled, leaving daily dozens of innocent civilians killed and wounded;
- The worst situation remains in the besieged city of Mariupol, which is now almost destroyed. Nearly 130,000 civilians remain in blockades without water, heat, electricity, and communications. Thousands of civilians lost their lives due to Russian attacks and blockades. The current number of civilian deaths in Mariupol is estimated to reach 5,000 including about 210 children. Russia’s crimes include bombardment of a drama theatre where up to 1,300 civilians were being sheltered, of an art school, which served as a shelter for around 400 civilians, and seizure of a hospital with 400 civilians in it used as a human shield;
- In the liberated town of Bucha, hundreds of civilians were found, murdered by the Russian troops during the occupation. 410 bodies have been taken by the law enforcement agencies for examination. In the towns of Borodianka and Hostomel located close to Bucha, hundreds of civilians went missing, and were killed or wounded;
- The number of civilians killed by Russian troops exceeds military losses. In the liberated towns and villages, Ukrainian servicemen continue to find dead civilians, killed with their hands tied in dozens by the Russian army.
Meanwhile, the US administration hopes its latest sanctions against Russia would ensure that the latter’s GDP contracts up to 15 percent this year, “wiping out the last fifteen years of economic gains”. Quoting “experts”, the White House claimed inflation in Russia is already spiking above 15 percent and forecast to accelerate higher. “More than 600 private sector companies have already left the Russian market. Supply chains in Russia have been severely disrupted. Russia will very likely lose its status as a major economy, and it will continue a long descent into economic, financial, and technological isolation,” it stated.
– global bihari bureau
