Mon 20 Mar 2023 15.34 EDT
Xi’s visit comes three days after Putin was made the subject of an arrest warrant by the international criminal court for overseeing the abduction of Ukrainian children, sending Russia another significant step on the path to becoming a pariah state, and two days after he made a surprise visit to the occupied city of Mariupol in an apparent show of defiance towards the court and the west in general.
Washington said on Monday that Xi’s visit to Moscow soon after the ICC’s court order amounted to Beijing providing “diplomatic cover for Russia to continue to commit” war crimes.
“That President Xi is travelling to Russia days after the international criminal court issued an arrest warrant for President Putin suggests that China feels no responsibility to hold the Kremlin accountable for the atrocities committed in Ukraine,” the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told journalists.
“The world should not be fooled by any tactical move by Russia, supported by China or any other country, to freeze the war on its own terms,” he said.
Blinken said the United States welcomed any diplomacy for a “just and durable peace” but raised doubts that China was safeguarding the “sovereignty and territorial integrity” of Ukraine.
“Any plan that does not prioritize this critical principle is a stalling tactic at best or is merely seeking to facilitate an unjust outcome. That is not constructive diplomacy,” Blinken said.
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