US and other Western nations wary of Xi's trip to Moscow

Washington and other Western capitals reacted warily on Friday to the announcement of Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Russia next week, with the US "deeply concerned" Beijing could try to pose as a peacemaker by promoting an immediate ceasefire in the war in Ukraine.

Both Beijing and the Kremlin confirmed on Friday that Xi will make a state visit to Russia from Monday to Wednesday to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin. It will be Xi's first foreign trip since he secured an unprecedented third term as China's president last week.

His face-to-face talks with Putin are widely expected to have broad implications for the war, now in its second year, and China's already tense relationship with the US.

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But its significance grew further on Friday after pressure grew on Putin: the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the Netherlands, issued an arrest warrant for him over the war crime of illegally deporting Ukrainian children to Russia.

Additionally, Turkey, after blocking Finland's application to join Nato in the wake of Russia's invasion, agreed to support it. Putin has maintained that Nato is a threat to Russia.

Beijing's foreign ministry described the trip as a "visit of friendship, cooperation and peace".

Washington, though, sees it as a potentially harmful reframing of the conflict. The Chinese might promote a ceasefire and "try to couch themselves as peacemakers and as ... the only ones calling for the fighting to stop", National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.

"We have deep concerns about that, because of what it actually means in terms of benefiting Russia at the expense of Ukraine," he said.

"That's why we're expressing these concerns even before the visit."

The US position is that any ceasefire that freezes positions on the ground would validate Russia's seizing of Ukrainian territory and give it a chance to rebuild its forces for further attacks.

"We don't support calls for a ceasefire right now," Kirby said. "We certainly don't support calls for a ceasefire that would be called for by the PRC [People's Republic of China] in a meeting in Moscow that would simply benefit Russia."

He criticised Beijing for not joining the rest of the international community in supporting Ukraine. "We would certainly hope that they would. But we'll see what comes out of this meeting," he said.

Britain also said that any peace deal not predicated on Ukraine's sovereignty and self determination was no peace deal at all.

"We will continue to call on China, as we have done before, to join other countries across the world in calling on Putin to withdraw his troops," a spokesperson for British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said on Friday.

Still, the spokesperson said, "if China wants to play a genuine role in restoring sovereignty to Ukraine, then we would obviously welcome that".

European Union nations are watching Xi's trip closely to see if Beijing tries to build on the 12-point position paper on ending the war that it issued on the first anniversary of Russia's invasion last month.

The EU ambassador to China, Jorge Toledo Albinana, was briefed by China's foreign ministry about the trip in Beijing on Friday morning, a senior EU official said.

"We were told this morning in Beijing that he was going there to make efforts to bring peace ... Efforts? OK, but let's see what they are," the official said.

"We of course appreciate that the Chinese provide this sort of information - that shows, obviously, that they want to be constructive, which is good," the official added.

The ambassador conveyed to the ministry that there could be no peace without a full withdrawal of Russian troops.

"As constructive as you can be, there are not many ways to end this war. There is only one, which is Putin withdrawing his troops from Ukraine and restoring integrity, sovereignty and independence," the EU official added.

The EU was also informed that Beijing would be communicating with Kyiv before Xi's trip. On Thursday, the two countries' foreign ministers spoke on the phone.

European diplomats held an in-depth debate on the position paper on Wednesday, while foreign ministers from EU's 27 member states may discuss it further on Monday.

China's paper was quickly dismissed as "pro-Russia" by senior officials in Brussels upon its release on February 24, but recently EU diplomats' views appear to have slightly softened.

"It is not a matter of black and white: some parts of it are good, some parts are bad," said a Western European diplomat who was involved in the discussion.

"We don't see it as a real solution yet, but there is some overlap with Ukraine's own peace proposals, so we need to work with the Chinese to find a space where the two could converge," the diplomat added.

A second EU diplomat said that expectations about how much China could or would help as a peacemaker were well-managed, calling Xi's three-day trip to Moscow as evidence of Beijing's biases.

"Xi and Putin signed a partnership with 'no limits', so a trip by XI to Moscow certainly fits within that partnership," the diplomat said.

"We just hope Xi will be able to deliver a couple of useful messages on the nuclear weapons issue, but it is obvious that China's neutrality is a pro-Russian neutrality," the diplomat added.

Back in Washington, Kirby said that the US had consistently warned Beijing of "consequences" if it supplies weapons to Russia for use in the war, and that the White House did not believe "they've taken anything off the table".

However, he added, "we also haven't seen any indications any confirmation that they've made a decision to move in that direction or have actually provided anything".

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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