Free Republic

BY MATTHEW LEE / AP MARCH 2, 2023 10:02 AM EST (NEW DELHI) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov talked briefly Thursday at a meeting of top diplomats from the Group of 20 nations in the highest-level in-person talks between the two countries since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

After claiming its spy balloon was a harmless weather balloon and angrily condemning the Biden administration for shooting the balloon down (after it crossed the continental U.S.), the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is now not only demanding that the U.S. take all the blame for the incident but also that the U.S. abandon its unofficial ally Taiwan. As usual, the genocidal CCP is uninhibited by any interest in truth or justice.CCP state propaganda outlet Xinhua News published a statement from a Chinese Foreign Ministry (FM) spokesman on Feb. 19. The spokesman said that China acceded to a U.S. request and...

U.S. intelligence suggests China is considering providing arms and ammunition to Russia, an involvement in the Kremlin’s war effort that would be a “serious problem,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said. Blinken said the United States long has been concerned that China would provide weapons to Russia. He pointed to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s promise to Russian President Vladimir Putin of a partnership with “no limits” when they met just weeks before Putin sent his troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. Since then, ties between the two countries have only grown stronger. “We’ve been watching this very, very closely....

As the rift between the US and China over the balloon saga widens, so has the divide within the global community scrutinising their high-stakes dispute. The latest testy exchange took place on Saturday, when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met China's foreign affairs minister Wang Yi on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich, in the first high-level meeting since the row began. Mr Blinken said they would not "stand for any violation of our sovereignty" and said "this irresponsible act must never again occur". Mr Wang, meanwhile, called the episode a "political farce manufactured by the US"...