The strategic partnership between China and Russia has only grown closer since the invasion of Ukraine.
London:
China is sending “lethal aid” to Russia for use in its war against Ukraine, British Defense Minister Grant Shapps said on Wednesday.
“Today I can reveal that we have evidence that Russia and China are collaborating on combat equipment for use in Ukraine,” he said in a speech at a conference in London.
Shapps warned that NATO needed to “wake up” and boost defense spending across the alliance.
“US and British defense intelligence may reveal that lethal aid is now flowing from China to Russia and Ukraine.”
He argued that democratic states should defend “full steam ahead” the freedoms that depend on the international order, meaning that “we need more allies and partners” around the world.
“It’s time for the world to wake up. And that means translating this momentum into concrete plans and capabilities. And that starts with laying the groundwork for an alliance-wide increase in spending on our collective deterrence,” he said.
The strategic partnership between China and Russia has only grown closer since the invasion of Ukraine, but Beijing has rejected Western claims that it is helping Moscow’s war effort.
China has also offered a critical lifeline to Russia’s isolated economy, with trade growing since the invasion and expected to reach $240 billion by 2023, according to Chinese customs data.
US President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan, however, appeared to disagree with some of Shapps’ comments.
He said the possibility that China could “directly provide weapons – lethal assistance – to Russia” had been a concern previously, but that “we have not seen that so far.”
The United States, however, has “concerns about what China is doing to feed Russia’s war machine, not by supplying weapons directly, but by providing inputs to Russia’s defense industrial base,” he added.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin gave a strong show of unity during a meeting in Beijing earlier this month.
Xi said in a statement following talks with Putin during his visit that the two sides agreed on the need for a “political solution” to resolve the war.
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