Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed not to provide Russia with weapons in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war.
“I had a phone conservation with the leader of China by phone. He said that he will not sell any weapons to Russia. We will see,” Zelensky said during a press conference with President Joe Biden at the Group of Seven summit in Italy on Thursday, without elaborating on when the discussion took place. “He gave me his word.”
Beijing and Moscow have maintained close ties throughout Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and declared a “no limits” partnership in February 2022, days before the war began. China has not publicly criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade the Eastern European country and has maintained that it adopts a neutral position on the war.
“By the way, China is not supplying weapons but the ability to produce those weapons and the technology available to do it, so it is in fact helping Russia,” Biden added Thursday after Zelensky finished speaking.
The United States warned its allies in April that China was providing Russia with satellite imagery to assist Putin’s military in the war.
“Amid signs of continued military integration between the two nations, China has provided Russia with satellite imagery for military purposes, as well as microelectronics and machine tools for tanks, according to people familiar with the matter,” Bloomberg reported on April 7, citing unnamed sources.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned her Chinese counterpart Vice Premier He Lifeng during her visit to China in early April that there will be “significant consequences” for Chinese companies supporting Moscow’s war against Ukraine.
“Secretary Yellen emphasized that companies, including those in the PRC [People’s Republic of China], must not provide material support for Russia’s war against Ukraine.. and the significant consequences if they do so,” the Treasury Department wrote on its website.
In February, Wang Yi, foreign minister and director of the Chinese Communist Party’s foreign affairs commission, told his Ukraine counterpart Dmytro Kuleba that Beijing is not supplying Russia weapons in the war.
China’s position on the conflict “adheres to the political solution of hot-spot issues, insists on promoting peace and promoting talks, does not add fuel to the fire, does not take advantage of opportunities, and does not sell lethal weapons to conflict areas or conflict parties,” Wang said.
Xi is Putin’s closest major ally. In an interview with Chinese state media in October, the Russian president said his Chinese counterpart “calls me his friend, and I call him my friend.”
The Russian president added that there is a saying, “‘Tell me who your friend is, and I will tell you who you are.'” He went on: “Therefore, if I now praise Chairman Xi Jinping, I will feel somehow uncomfortable—it’s like I’m praising myself. So I’ll try to be objective.”
Putin described Xi as “one of the recognized world leaders” who does not “make a momentary decision based on some current situation, he assesses the situation, analyzes and looks into the future.”