Washington. US President Joe Biden said he warned his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping of damage to the investment climate if Beijing violated sanctions imposed by a coalition of countries against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
In an interview with CBS, Biden said he told Xi that violating the sanctions would be a “huge mistake” but that there is no indication so far that China has actively supported the Russian war effort through arms sales.
Biden said he made the warning in a phone call shortly after Xi met Putin at the Beijing Winter Olympics on February 4 and expressed support for the Kremlin leader.
“I called President Xi … not to threaten at all, just to tell him … if you believe that Americans and others will continue to invest in China, when you violate the sanctions that have been imposed on Russia, I think that you’re making a gigantic mistake,” he said.
“So far, there is no indication that they have offered weapons that Russia wanted,” Biden said.
Trump also rejected the idea that the Sino-Russian alliance effectively means the United States is fighting a new kind of Cold War.
“I don’t think it’s a new, more complicated Cold War,” he said.
Extend attacks
Russia has expanded its attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure in the past week following battlefield setbacks, and is likely to increase further, the UK said on Sunday.
On Saturday, Volodymyr Zelensky said in a video address that the authorities had found a mass grave with the bodies of 17 soldiers in Izium. Some, he maintained, showed signs of torture.
Residents of Izium have been searching for their dead relatives in a forest pit where emergency workers began exhuming bodies last week.
