Warsaw:

China is staging army drills with Belarus this week at NATO’s eastern border, in a sign of escalating tensions between Beijing and the US-led defence alliance.

The joint “antiterrorist” exercises on Russian ally Belarus’s soil near the Polish border come as NATO leaders gather for a summit in Washington, with the war in nearby Ukraine high on their agenda.

With relations between NATO on the one hand and China and Russia on the other at a low ebb, analysts believe that Beijing wanted to send the alliance a warning message with the timing of the drills.

Sino-Belarusian exercises have taken place before, but this is the first time since Russia invaded neighbouring Ukraine, a NATO ally, in February 2022.

The exercises began July 8 in Brest, a city right on the border with Poland, according to a statement issued on Wednesday by the Chinese defence ministry.

The statement said the manoeuvres will last until mid-July, but did not give the exact number of Chinese soldiers involved.

Both sides are working to “improve combat techniques and deepen cooperation and communication between the two armies”, the statement added.

Chinese diplomatic officials insisted that the exercises were “not aimed at any country in particular”.

But Poland’s defence ministry slammed the timing of the exercises.

It warned of “the risk of the operations in question being used for disinformation and propaganda purposes… to coincide with the NATO summit”.

However small in scale, the exercises still involve China deploying troops on NATO’s doorstep, and to a country Russia used as a launchpad for its invasion of Ukraine.

And the exercises come as Beijing, one of Moscow’s key partners is also experiencing increasingly tense relations with NATO.

Strategic signal 

Analysts believe that the date and location of the exercises were not chosen by chance, arguing that China wanted to send NATO a message.

“Multilateral exercises are often used to send political signals,” Kelly Grieco of the Stimson Center foreign policy and defence think tank told AFP.

Indeed, she argues that when it comes to military drills, “it’s much more about political signal more than for the exercise itself”.

She points out that China had already carried out anti-terrorism exercises in Belarus four times between 2011 and 2018, but had not done so since.

That they are taking place “that close to the border is part of the signalling” too, she added.

Countries often organise their joint exercises to coincide with developments abroad — not least of them China, added Alice Ekman, senior analyst for Asia at the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS).

“In April 2023, the Chinese held exercises with Russia in the East China Sea, close to Japanese islands, on the eve of a trilateral US-Japan-South Korea summit to signal their opposition to such a summit being held,” Ekman told AFP.

Similarly, China staged military manoeuvres in the South China Sea in May 2024 as the US-Japan-Philippines-Australia meeting was in full swing, she added.

As well as moving closer to Russia, China is becoming increasingly hostile to NATO.

It accuses NATO of working to contain China at Washington’s instigation, with Beijing worried about the alliance’s expanding role in the Asia-Pacific region.

Moreover, China has never forgiven the bombing of its embassy in Belgrade by a NATO plane in 1999.

It also believes that the alliance has already overstepped its geographical sphere of influence in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan.

NATO is perceived by China as “clearly hostile for historical reasons”, Ekman said.

But those reasons were becoming “increasingly strategic as the threat from China becomes an integral part of the organisation’s strategic thinking”, she added.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping on May 16 reaffirmed their “no-limits” partnership that has deepened as both countries face rising tensions with the West, and they criticized U.S. military alliances in Asia and the Pacific region.

At their summit in Beijing, Mr. Putin thanked Mr. Xi for China’s proposals for ending the war in Ukraine, which have been rejected by Ukraine and its Western supporters as largely following the Kremlin’s line.

Mr. Putin’s two-day state visit to one of his strongest allies and trading partners comes as Russian forces are pressing an offensive in northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region in the most significant border incursion since the full-scale invasion began on February 24, 2022.

China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia was provoked into attacking Ukraine by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for weapons production.

China, which hasn’t criticised the invasion, proposed a broadly worded peace plan in 2023, calling for a cease-fire and for direct talks between Moscow and Kyiv. The plan was rejected by both Ukraine and the West for failing to call for Russia to leave occupied parts of Ukraine.

China also gave a rhetorical nod to Russia’s narrative about Nazism in Ukraine, with a joint statement Thursday that said Moscow and Beijing should defend the post-World War II order and “severely condemn the glorification of or even attempts to revive Nazism and militarism”. Mr. Putin has cited the “denazification” of Ukraine as a main goal of the military action, falsely describing the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who is Jewish and lost relatives in the Holocaust, as neo-Nazis.

The largely symbolic and ceremonial visit stressed partnership between two countries who both face challenges in their relationship with the U.S. and Europe.

“Both sides want to show that despite what is happening globally, despite the pressure that both sides are facing from the U.S., both sides are not about to turn their backs on each other anytime soon,” said Hoo Tiang Boon, who researches Chinese foreign policy at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

While Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi said they were seeking an end to the war, they offered no new proposals in their public remarks.

“China hopes for the early return of Europe to peace and stability and will continue to play a constructive role toward this,” Mr. Xi said in prepared remarks to media in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People. His words echoed what China said when it offered a broad plan for peace.

Earlier, Mr. Putin was welcomed in Tiananmen Square with military pomp. After a day in Beijing, the Russian leader arrived in Harbin, where he was expected to attend a number of events on May 17.

On the eve of his visit, Mr. Putin said China’s proposal could “lay the groundwork for a political and diplomatic process that would take into account Russia’s security concerns and contribute to achieving a long-term and sustainable peace”. Mr. Zelenskyy has said any negotiations must include a restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the withdrawal of Russian troops, the release of all prisoners, a tribunal for those responsible for the aggression and security guarantees for Ukraine.

After Russia’s latest offensive in Ukraine last week, the war is in a critical stage as Ukraine’s depleted military waits for new supplies of anti-aircraft missiles and artillery shells from the United States after months of delay.

The joint statement from China and Russia also criticised U.S. foreign policy at length, hitting out at U.S.-formed alliances, which the statement called having a “Cold War mentality.” China and Russia also accused the U.S. of deploying land-based intermediate range missile systems in the Asia-Pacific under the pretext of joint exercises with allies. They said that the U.S. actions in Asia were “changing the balance of power” and “endangering the security of all countries in the region.” The joint statement demonstrated China’s support to Russia.

China is “falling over themselves to give Russia face and respect without saying anything specific, and without committing themselves to anything”, said Susan Thornton, a former diplomat and a senior fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School.

The meeting was yet another affirmation of the friendly “no-limits” relationship China and Russia signed in 2022, just before Moscow invaded Ukraine.

Since then, Russia has become increasingly dependent economically on China as Western sanctions cut its access to much of the international trading system. China’s increased trade with Russia, totalling $240 billion last year, has helped the country mitigate some of the worst blowback from sanctions.

Moscow has diverted the bulk of its energy exports to China and relied on Chinese companies for importing high-tech components for Russian military industries to circumvent Western sanctions.

“I and President Putin agree we should actively look for convergence points of the interests of both countries, to develop each’s advantages, and deepen integration of interests, realizing each others’ achievements,” Mr. Xi said.

U.S. State Department deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said that China can’t “have its cake and eat it too”.

“You cannot want to have deepened relations with Europe … while simultaneously continuing to fuel the biggest threat to European security in a long time,” Mr. Patel said.

Mr. Xi congratulated Mr. Putin on starting his fifth term in office and celebrated the 75th anniversary of diplomatic relations between the former Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, which was established following a civil war in 1949. Mr. Putin has eliminated all major political opponents and faced no real challenge in the March election.

“In a famous song of that time, 75 years ago — it is still performed today — there is a phrase that has become a catchphrase: Russians and Chinese are brothers forever,’” Mr. Putin said.

Russia-China military ties have strengthened during the war. They have held a series of joint war games in recent years.

China remains a major market for Russian military, while also massively expanding its domestic defensive industries, including building aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines.

Mr. Putin has previously said that Russia has been sharing highly sensitive military technologies with China that helped significantly bolster its defence capability.

Berlin:

China must stop supporting Russia’s war in Ukraine if it wants to enjoy good relations with the West, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Thursday, warning Beijing in unusually harsh words it cannot have it both ways.

During a visit to Berlin, the chief of the Western military alliance said Beijing’s help was vital to Moscow’s war effort as it was propping up Russia’s war economy by sharing high-end technology like semiconductors.

“Last year, Russia imported 90% of its microelectronics from China, used to produce missiles, tanks and aircraft. China is also working to provide Russia with improved satellite capabilities and imaging,” Stoltenberg said.

“China says it wants good relations with the West. At the same time, Beijing continues to fuel the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War Two. They cannot have it both ways,” he warned.

Stoltenberg cautioned Western allies against becoming as dependent on China as they had been on Russia.

“In the past, we made the mistake of becoming dependent on Russian oil and gas,” he said.

“We must not repeat that mistake with China. Depending on its money, its raw materials, its technologies – dependencies make us vulnerable.”

China has strengthened trade and military ties with Russia in recent years as the United States and its allies imposed sanctions on both, but particularly Moscow for the invasion of Ukraine.

China-Russian trade hit a record of $240.1 billion in 2023, up 26.3% from a year earlier, Chinese customs data shows. Chinese shipments to Russia jumped 46.9% in 2023 while imports from Russia rose 13%.

Last month, Reuters reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin will travel to China in May for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, in what could be the first overseas trip of his new presidential term.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin gestures while speaking on a visit to his campaign headquarters after a presidential election in Moscow, Russia on March 18, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

China congratulated Vladimir Putin on March 18 on winning Russia’s presidential election and said the strategic relationship between the two countries will continue to strengthen.

Mr. Putin won a record post-Soviet landslide in Russia’s election on Sunday, cementing his already tight grip on power in a victory he said showed Moscow had been right to stand up to the West and send its troops into Ukraine.

Also Read | China’s Xi says strong Russia ties a ‘strategic choice’

China President Xi Jinping sent a message to congratulate Mr. Putin on his re-election as president of Russia, Chinese state media reported.

“We firmly believe that under the strategic guidance of President Xi Jinping and President Putin, China-Russia relations will continue to move forward,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters when asked about the vote.

“China and Russia are each other’s largest neighbours and comprehensive strategic partners in the new era.”

China has strengthened its ties with Russia over the past few years, even as Western criticism of the war in Ukraine intensified.

The two countries declared a “no limits” partnership in February 2022 when Mr. Putin visited Beijing just days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine, triggering the deadliest land war in Europe since World War Two.

It has been reported that China and Russia are preparing “several meetings” between Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin this year.

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Russia, and Mr. Lin said the two heads of state would continue to maintain close exchanges.