A senior Republican lawmaker says China is considering sending 100 drones and other lethal weapons to Russia, as US officials warn Beijing could step up its support for Moscow in the Ukraine conflict.
Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House foreign affairs committee, said the US is increasingly concerned about Beijing’s willingness to increase support for Moscow during its year-long invasion of Ukraine, ahead of an expected meeting between Russian leader Vladimir Putin and the Chinese. Xi Jinping’s counterpart next week.
News that a Chinese company is in talks to supply Russia with drones was first reported by Der Spiegel.
“We have intelligence reporting that they want to send 100 drones to Russia. We also know that they are buying all their energy from them, supporting the economy,” McCaul said in an interview with the ABC news network.
McCaul said Beijing also wants to send “more lethal weapons”.
“The fact that they will meet next week, President Xi and Putin, to discuss this unholy alliance, to put weapons into Ukraine, for me is very disturbing because when Ukraine is today, tomorrow it will be Taiwan. .”
While the US previously believed that China was unwilling to provide assistance to Russia during its war with Ukraine, that assessment has changed this month following new information, CIA director William Burns said.
In response, U.S. officials have stepped up public warnings to China about the potential consequences of the move — a message that was also sent to Chinese counterparts in back-channel meetings, according to some U.S. officials.
While the U.S. says Beijing is providing Russia with non-intrusive assistance in the conflict, such as satellite imagery to help target Ukrainian weapons, the addition of drones would signal a serious escalation of China’s involvement in the war. This month, US secretary of state Antony Blinken said Beijing was considering giving Moscow potentially lethal aid, including weapons and ammunition, but gave no details.
On Sunday, Burns said in an interview with CBS that the US was “sure” that China’s leadership was considering “providing lethal equipment”. But he said Beijing had not made a final decision and there was no evidence, so far, of “the delivery of potentially lethal equipment”.
Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, has been working on the issue. In several interviews on Sunday, he noted that China does not send shipments to Russia. Sullivan said the U.S. would continue to use the “private high-level diplomatic channels” it had set up to warn Beijing of the consequences of giving aid to Moscow, as it did during Blinken’s meeting in Munich last week with Wang Yi, China’s top leader. diplomat.
“We’re going to be watching carefully, we’re going to be vigilant, and we’re going to continue to send a strong message,” Sullivan told CNN. “We’ve always been very clear about the consequences of our relationship, and I think the same about China’s relationship with our European allies.”
Sullivan added: “Beijing will have to make its own decisions about how to proceed, whether to provide military aid. However, if it goes down that path, it will have a real cost to China.