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Chinese President Xi Jinping is planning to visit Russia as soon as next week, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday, when Moscow and Kyiv both reported intense fighting in the bloodiest battle fought in the eastern city of Bakhmut.
Xi’s visit next week, just days after he won his third term as China’s leader, will come sooner than previously expected. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has publicly invited Xi to Moscow without specifying a date, will portray it as a show of support for Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Sources briefed on the matter could not be identified due to the sensitivity of the issue. China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment and the Kremlin declined to comment.
The battle is relentless
On the ground, both sides described relentless fighting in Bakhmut, a small, devastated town in Eastern Ukraine that has become the focus of Russia’s winter campaign involving hundreds of thousands of new reservists and mercenaries.
Kyiv announced last week that it had decided to defend Bakhmut rather than retreat. Russian forces led by Wagner’s personal army have captured the eastern part of the city but have so far been unable to surround it.
“All enemy attempts to capture the city were repulsed by artillery, tanks, and other firearms,” Ukrainian Col.-General said. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of the ground forces who vowed not to retreat, was quoted by the Ukrainian Media Military Center.
Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin said on Sunday the situation was “difficult, very difficult.”
“The closer to the center of the city, the more difficult it is to fight … Ukrainians spend their reserves without limits. But we are moving forward and will move forward,” Prigozhin said in comments released by the press service.
He also said that Russian soldiers are supplying their troops with truckloads of ammunition. He had previously complained that Russian high-ranking officials were deliberately starving him of ammunition, a charge the defense minister denied.
‘There are no limits’
Xi’s visit to Russia will be a major event for Putin, who has portrayed the war in Ukraine as a conflict with the combined might of the West. Russia relies on China to buy oil and gas it can no longer sell in Europe.
China has been publicly neutral on the war, refusing to blame them while opposing Western sanctions against Russia. It has been offered a few weeks ago to broker peace, a proposal met with skepticism in the West.
The United States has said since last month that it believes China is considering Russian weapons, which Beijing denies. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he will invite World War III.
Most previous reports suggested Xi’s visit would not come until later: The Wall Street Journal reported last month that a visit to Moscow could take place in April or early May.
China and Russia forged an “unrestricted” partnership in February 2022, weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, and both have repeatedly stressed the strength of their relationship in public. China’s top diplomat visited Moscow in February during the week of the war’s first anniversary, while US President Joe Biden traveled to Kyiv.
Against the ruins
The months-long battle over the ruins of Bakhmut, described by both sides as a meat grinder, has been Europe’s bloodiest infantry battle since World War II.
Moscow says taking Bakhmut would be a major victory, paving the way for the capture of the rest of Donetsk, a central war objective. Kyiv said it has decided not to pull out, continue the war to inflict losses on the Russian invasion force said driven by Putin’s need to claim the only victory in more than half a year.
Zelenskyy said on Sunday that his forces had killed more than 1,100 Russian soldiers in Bakhmut in less than a week, and wounded more than 1,500. Russia’s defense ministry says its forces have killed more than 220 Ukrainian service members in the past 24 hours in the Donetsk region. The enemy’s loss figures cannot be confirmed and neither side releases regular data on its own losses.
Retired Admiral Mike Mullen, former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he thought it was only a matter of time before the West provided fighter jets to Ukraine to help the country defend its airspace.
After Ukrainian advances in the second half of 2022, Kyiv has focused on defense for the past three months, while Moscow has launched an offensive campaign using car reservists and convicts recruited from prisons as mercenaries.
Kyiv is believed to be planning its own counterattack in the spring when the muddy ground dries up and hundreds of Western armored vehicles and Challenger and Leopard battle tanks arrive.
The tank will have a big impact, said Leonid Khoda, commander of Ukraine’s 1st Tank Brigade fighting in the Donbas, including Donetsk and Luhansk regions: “Everyone is waiting, the 1st Tank Brigade is also waiting. Soon we will send personnel. to learn to operate (Leopard) 2A6,” he told Reuters.
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