U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met Monday with a senior Chinese diplomat to warn Beijing that it would face international sanctions if it helped Russia and its invasion of Ukraine, in a meeting that a senior administration official said took ” tense” seven hours.
However, the White House declined to describe any red lines or possible actions.
“In general, I would like to say that we have deep concerns about China’s alliance with Russia at this time,” the official said, “and the National Security Adviser has been explicit about this concern, as well as the potential consequences of certain actions.”
The official stressed that the meeting had been planned for a long time and was not set up to discuss fears that Russia had turned to China for military assistance.
In any case, Beijing has found itself at the center of the latest diplomatic effort.
Senior U.S. intelligence officials said last week they thought Chinese leaders might be worried that Moscow’s invasion and President Vladimir Putin’s increasingly brutal tactics would reflect badly on them if they offered diplomatic cover.
Against this backdrop, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported on Monday morning that Yang Jiechi met with Sullivan in Rome, but gave no further details.
US officials and allies have repeatedly said China risks secondary sanctions if it sides with Russia.
And on Sunday, they said Putin had asked his ally for military assistance for his hesitant invasion.
But it has prompted accusations by Chinese officials of misinformation.
Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for the Beijing Foreign Ministry, said America was “targeting China with evil intentions on the Ukrainian issue.”
A day earlier, Sullivan had warned Beijing of the “consequences” if it tried to rescue Putin, such as by providing ways to circumvent international economic sanctions.
“We will make sure that neither China nor anyone else can compensate Russia for these losses,” Sullivan told NBC ahead of the meeting.
“As for specific ways to do this, I’m not going to state all this publicly, but we will report it to China privately, as we have already done and will continue to do.”
President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan (left) met with top Chinese diplomat Yang Jiechi (right) at a hotel in Rome Monday morning as part of a diplomatic effort to keep Beijing from supporting Moscow.
At the Cavalieri Waldorf Astoria in Rome, Sullivan met with Djiech to discuss the war in Ukraine.
A Ukrainian soldier helps firefighters search the ruins of a Kiev apartment building for survivors and casualties after Russia resumed its bombing raids early Monday morning.
A child watches as she stands in front of a destroyed apartment building following shelling in Kyiv on March 14.
Two people were killed on Monday during a rocket attack on a Kiev home. One person was killed when a rocket hit the residential complex, and a second was killed by debris from an intercepted second rocket.
And he told CNN that Washington is closely monitoring how much China provides economic or material support.
“We are telling Beijing directly, privately, that large-scale efforts to evade sanctions or support Russia to remove them will definitely have consequences,” he said.
“We will not allow this to continue and let Russia be the lifeline for these economic sanctions from any country, anywhere in the world.”
Russia on Monday denied it needed Chinese help.
“No, Russia has its own potential to continue the operation, which, as we have already said, is unfolding according to plan and will be completed on time and in full,” said Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir Putin.
All this puts China at the center of diplomatic efforts to end the conflict in its third week.
U.S. officials believe Putin intended to take the Ukrainian capital Kyiv in a lightning-fast two-day offensive.
Instead, almost three weeks later, his forces are still battling Ukrainian troops who have used hit-and-run attacks and an influx of deadly foreign weapons, including anti-tank grenades.
U.S. officials, speaking anonymously, say the Kremlin has asked Beijing for help resupplying its military supplies, but did not say exactly what Putin asked for or when the request was made. Western countries are constantly supplying Ukraine with anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons.
“China is deeply concerned and saddened by the situation in Ukraine,” Liu Pengyu, a spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said, adding that he was not aware of any Chinese offers to help Russia.
“We sincerely hope that the situation will improve and peace will return as soon as possible.”
Rescuers work near a residential building damaged by shelling by Russian troops early Monday morning.
A view of a damaged area after shrapnel from a Tochka rocket, believed to have been launched by Ukrainian forces, fell in the Donetsk region, killing 20 civilians and injuring 9, March 14.
View of damaged buildings and streets from ongoing Russian shelling and rocket attacks in Kharkiv on March 13.
A Ukrainian firefighter hauls a hose inside a large food warehouse that was destroyed in an early morning airstrike on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine Sunday, March 13.
Intelligence officials have hinted that there may be a chance to use Chinese influence in Moscow, possibly advocating a ceasefire.
China abstained from voting in the United Nations General Assembly to condemn the Russian invasion rather than vote against it, and officials have used the term “war” to describe what Moscow claims is a “special military operation.”
And last week, CIA director Bill Burns said that Chinese leader Xi Jinping may be concerned about the way the war is unfolding and that its ugly nature could trigger guilt by association.
“President Xi is probably a little dismayed as he watches President Putin bring Americans and Europeans closer together and strengthen the transatlantic alliance in ways that would have been hard to imagine before the invasion,” he said. said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has said he is ready to personally meet with Putin for talks, said last week that he was ready to “discuss and find a compromise” with Russia over the future of Donbass, a region of eastern Ukraine made up of Donetsk. and Lugansk, where many ethnic Russians live.
On Monday, representatives of Russia and Ukraine held talks via video link. The Ukrainian negotiator said he wants to achieve a ceasefire, the withdrawal of Russian troops and security guarantees for Ukraine.
Ukrainian Presidential Adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said talks would resume on Tuesday after what he called a “technical pause”.
These were the first negotiations in a week.
Earlier, the Ukrainian authorities said that two people were killed and seven were injured in a strike by Russian troops on an aircraft factory in Kyiv, which caused a fire. The Antonov factory is Ukraine’s largest aircraft factory and is best known for producing many of the world’s largest cargo aircraft.
Russian artillery shelling also hit a nine-story residential building in the northern Obolonsky district of the city, killing two more people, authorities said.
Firefighters worked to rescue the survivors, carefully carrying the injured woman on a stretcher away from the blackened and still smoking building.