U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN yesterday that China will face “real costs,” if Beijing decides to send lethal weaponry to Russia. He said Washington was monitoring Beijing’s actions, and China so far has not taken the option of providing such aid off the table. “Beijing will have to make its own decisions about how it proceeds, whether it provides military assistance; but if it goes down that road, it will come at real costs to China,” Sullivan said.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry has rejected the Biden Administration’s threats and accusations. “On the Ukraine issue, China has been actively promoting peace talks and the political settlement of the crisis. The US is in no position to point fingers at China-Russia relations. We do not accept coercion or pressure from the US,” said spokeswoman Mao Ning during the ministry’s briefing today. “In addition to pouring lethal weapons into the battlefield in Ukraine, the US has been selling sophisticated weapons to the Taiwan region in violation of the three China-US joint communiqués. What exactly is the US up to? The world deserves to know the answer.”
Not providing an answer to that question was CIA Director William Burns who, during an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation yesterday, claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “too confident” in his military’s ability to grind Ukraine into submission. Burns said the head of Russia’s intelligence services had displayed in their November meeting “a sense of cockiness and hubris” that reflected Putin’s own beliefs “that he can make time work for him, that he believes he can grind down the Ukrainians that he can wear down our European allies, that political fatigue will eventually set in.”
