&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "'Completely false': China rejects report claiming Xi told Trump Putin may regret invading Ukraine")
China on Tuesday officially rejected reports that Chinese President Xi Jinping told Donald Trump that Vladimir Putin could come to regret invading Ukraine. The original report surfaced in the Financial Times, which cited anonymous individuals familiar with the US assessment of the high-level summit between the US and China in Beijing. According to those sources, Xi had allegedly used harsher language regarding the war in Ukraine than he had ever used before. The report also suggested that Trump proposed to join hands with Russia and China against the International Criminal Court.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson on the US social media platform shared a screenshot of the headline of the report along with captions, “completely false”. In a press briefing, Guo Jiakun firmly rejected the Financial Times report, “The information you mentioned does not match the facts and is completely fabricated out of thin air.”
The development, both the Financial Times report and the denial, comes at a delicate moment. US President Donald Trump has just concluded the high-stakes Xi-Putin summit in China, and now Chinese President Xi Jinping is about to host its traditional ally, Russian President Xi Jinping. Publicly, China has claimed that it has a “no limits partnership” with Russia. In 2022, the two parties signed a “no-limits” partnership agreement and three weeks after signing the agreement, Russia invaded Ukraine.
With the war in West Asia, China remains heavily dependent on Russia, and the two sides will discuss the proposed Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline, which could one day deliver an additional 50 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas per year from Russia's Arctic gas fields via Mongolia to China.
