China’s state-run Global Times propaganda newspaper published a column on Tuesday declaring America the true villain in the Russia-Ukraine war, citing former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s (D-HI) claim that blocking Ukraine from joining NATO could have prevented the war.
Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and the current war is eight years old. Russia has illegally occupied Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula since that year and extensive evidence indicates Moscow has been arming separatists in the eastern Donbas region since then. The escalation that began last week followed a declaration from strongman Vladimir Putin that the two separatist groups there were actually sovereign state governments independent of Kyiv. Putin announced a full-scale assault on all of Ukraine to “de-Nazify” the country at the request, he claimed, of the “governments” of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics.
China has played no significant role in the situation. While verbally supporting Russia’s alleged security concerns, it has refused to recognize Donetsk and Luhansk as countries and its officials have repeatedly defended Ukraine’s territorial integrity. In a phone call this weekend, Chinese dictator Xi Jinping reportedly told Putin that China supported “respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries.” The call resulted in Putin agreeing to peace talks with Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky that have produced no significant results at press time.
Rather than choose between Russia and Ukraine, Chinese state media outlets have taken to attacking America.
“Washington is the ‘special responsible party’ for the Ukraine crisis, and the US-led NATO holds tight the key to its solution,” the Global Times alleged.
“Throughout the development of the Ukraine crisis, it is way too obvious that the US has been creating the crisis, transferring it and profiting from it,” the newspaper accused, claiming that America’s role in the continued existence of NATO was the deciding factor in the current operation, not Putin’s decision to bomb multiple Ukrainian metropolitan areas. “Even now, it has not stopped stirring up trouble, which is quite dangerous. It has also made use of its public opinion machine to condemn others to take the international community hostage with its selfish interests.”
The Chinese newspaper cited Gabbard to support its accusations against America.
“As former US congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard said in an interview, ‘Biden can very easily prevent a war with Russia by guaranteeing that Ukraine will not become a member of NATO.’ What she said was totally true,” the Times asserted, “but the US mainstream media, unfortunately, not only selectively ignored such truth, but also deliberately exploited and consumed the suffering of the Ukrainian people.”
Gabbard has become one of the primary voices in American media blaming the United States for the war in Ukraine.
“If President Biden and NATO had … [agreed] ‘we’re going to take NATO off the table for Ukraine,'” Gabbard said in an appearance on Fox News last week, “something that both the U.S. and NATO have agreed is not likely to ever happen and something that is a legitimate security concern for Russia … this situation could have been prevented.”
Gabbard also condemned sanctions on Russia last week shortly before the current assault by Putin, claiming they “don’t work” and “will increase suffering and hardship for the American people.”
In reality, stricter sanctions on Russia during the administration of President Donald Trump resulted in no significant escalation in conflict. Russia’s lucrative, and now suspended, Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline project was resumed last summer after the sanctions were lifted by Biden. The move resulted in an outraged Zelensky declaring in an interview with Axios that he was “unpleasantly surprised” and Russia would use Nord Stream 2 as a “weapon” to attack his country.
Shortly before the current operation in Ukraine, Biden announced that he would pursue no further action against Russia if it were to launch a “minor incursion” into Ukraine.
“I think what you’re going to see is that Russia will be held accountable if it invades. And it depends on what it does,” Biden said during a press conference on January 22. “It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and then we end up having a fight about what to do and not do, et cetera.”
In its column on Tuesday, the Global Times also bizarrely claimed that American “public opinion” was blaming China for the conflict, without providing evidence.
“It aims to push China to fill the hole dug by the US and the West, although China is not a party to the crisis. Such a practice is neither decent nor fair,” an outraged Global Times denounced.
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