A pigeon flies in front of the Kremlin’s Spasskaya Tower (L) and St. Basil’s Cathedral (C) in Moscow, Russia, March 1, 2023.
Kirill Kudryavtsev | AFP | Getty Images
Initial US intelligence suggesting China is considering providing lethal aid to Russia for its war in Ukraine has been rounded up by Russian government officials, according to a current and a former US official who is familiar with the intelligence community.
US officials then spent weeks corroborating the information from other intelligence sources, the current and former officials said, and with allies also bringing additional streams of intelligence.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters.
The numerous intelligence strands suggesting that China is considering providing lethal aid to Russia, including ammunition and artillery, sparked alarm among Biden administration officials, especially given how such a move by Beijing is shifting the dynamics of the war in Moscow’s favour could move.
“A Russian military powered or supported by a Chinese infusion of weapons and platforms is militarily more lethal and capable,” a senior government official said. “It won’t do the people of Ukraine any good.”
Senior government officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and CIA Director Williams Burns, have publicly expressed their trust in the intelligence community and warned China against providing deadly military aid to Russia.
China has denied it is considering sending lethal aid to Russia, calling the US accusation “disinformation”.
US officials note that they have seen no sign of any movement or decision by China to take the step.
At a White House news briefing on Thursday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby was asked how serious the government is about China’s possible arms shipments to Russia.
“We don’t actually know,” Kirby said.
Kirby added that the US believes China hasn’t taken it off the table, but has also seen no evidence that Beijing is moving towards lethal aid to Moscow.
The NSC declined comment when contacted about this story.
The initial information was vague about what specific systems or equipment China planned to provide to Russia, including whether they could deliver drones beyond what is already commercially available, officials familiar with the information said.
“There are varying levels of confidence in how serious China is about this,” said a second senior US official.
In an interview with CBS News’ Face the Nation on Sunday, Burns conceded that the decision to release the information publicly was intended to deter China from providing deadly aid to Russia.
“We are confident that the Chinese leadership is considering providing lethal equipment,” Burns said.
He added, “Secretary Blinken and the President felt it was important to make very clear what the implications of this would be.”
There was some discussion within the administration about declassifying and publicly releasing some of the information, but officials decided against it, at least for now, because of the sources used to gather the information and because of the administration’s goal of getting a message across , against which China decided not to provide lethal aid to Russia for the time being, seems to have worked.
US allegations that China is considering supplying lethal military aid to Russia come as Beijing unveiled a proposed peace plan to end the war in Ukraine.
President Joe Biden and other senior US officials said the proposal was unilateral and only benefited Russia. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said China’s commitment to a possible peace plan was “not bad”.
Some Biden administration officials see China’s recent signals that it may fall off the sidelines in the war in Ukraine and engage in one way or another as an attempted power move aimed at strengthening the US following recent moves to strengthen it to undermine their alliances in the Asia-Pacific region.
Other officials warn that China has not yet made a decision on whether to get more involved, and remains on the same position it has been since the war began a year ago.
“There are issues where we just know we can’t see things as equals,” a senior US official said of the Biden administration’s relationship with China. “What we want to do, particularly when it comes to Ukraine, is that we want that to be one of the areas where we agree.”
In other words, the official said, one of the Biden administration’s goals is for China to recognize that “it’s not okay for Russia to kill innocent Ukrainian people, and no one should help them do it.”