For some time, the United States and some other countries as well as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have been spreading disinformation about China’s stance on the Ukraine situation, and making groundless accusations to attack and smear China. The falsehoods, confusing right with wrong are an attempt to mislead the world. China’s position on the Ukraine issue is above board, objective and fair.
Some examples of the disinformation and the reality are presented below to help the world understand what is really going on.
Falsehood 1: A U.S. intelligence report said China told Russia that it would not prevent Russia from taking actions in Ukraine,while asking Russia not to do it before the end of the Beijing Winter Olympics. It also said that Russia has asked China for assistance including weapons and other equipment.
Reality Check: Russia is a sovereign country that independently weighs,decides and implements its foreign policy based on its own strategy and interests. There is no need to seek China’s consent beforehand. In fact, U.S. officials have admitted that there is no evidence of China providing military assistance to Russia.
◆On March 14, 2022, Russian Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Russia had the potential to conduct an operation in Ukraine and had not requested assistance from other countries.
https://ria.ru/20220314/ukraina-1778071724.html
◆According to media reports, information reported by The New York Times based on an anonymous source was actually provided by a senior official for Indo-Pacific affairs on the White House National Security Council. It was fake news deliberately spread by the U.S. to discredit China, divert public attention and shift the blame.
https://world.huanqiu.com/article/4777H2eyHqM
◆According to NBC News, U.S. intelligence officers released information about the Russia-Ukraine conflict even when it wasn’t “rock solid”, and some assertions, such as China considering providing military help to Russia, were made up. This shows the U.S. was taking preemptive action to win the “information war” against Russia.
◆Speaking to the media on 22 March 2022, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan admitted that he had not seen any evidence of China providing military equipment to Russia.
Falsehood 2: The joint statement issued by China and Russia on 4 February this year provides evidence of China’s support for Russia on the Ukraine issue. The joint statement is a “veiled support” for Russia’s “invasion” of Ukraine.
Reality Check: Last February, China issued joint statements with a number of leaders attending the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Olympics. The U.S.’s interpretation of the China-Russia joint statement is out of context and part of a smear campaign.
◆During the Beijing Winter Olympics, many foreign leaders visited China. China issued joint statements with Kyrgyzstan, Argentina, Ecuador, Mongolia, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea and other countries to express mutual support on issues concerning each other’s core interests and highlight joint efforts to uphold multilateralism.
◆In their joint statement, China and Russia call on all States to champion humanity’s common values of peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom, respect the rights of peoples to independently determine the development paths of their countries and the sovereignty and the security and development interests of States, to protect the United Nations-centered international system, and the international law-based international order, seek true multilateralism with the United Nations and its Security Council playing a central and coordinating role, promote more democratic international relations, and ensure peace, stability and sustainable development across the world.
◆In the joint statement, China and Russia call for the establishment of a new model of major-country relations on the basis of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, and reaffirm that the new inter-State relations between China and Russia are superior to military and political alliances of the Cold War era, and the strengthening of bilateral strategic cooperation is neither aimed against third countries nor affected by circumstantial changes in third countries or the changing international environment.
◆The China-Russia relationship features non-alliance, non-confrontation and non-targeting at any third party. It differs from the practice of the US and a small number of other Western countries that stick to Cold War thinking and a friend-or-foe dichotomy to draw ideological lines, form so-called “alliances” and “cliques” and pursue bloc politics to create confrontation and division.
Falsehood 3: China helps Russia spread disinformation that “the US owns biological weapons in Ukraine”.
Reality Check: The US is doing this for the purpose of diverting public attention. According to public information, the US has conducted more bio-military activities than any other country in the world. It is also the only country that has used biological and chemical weapons in multiple wars, and the only country that opposes the establishment of a multilateral verification mechanism for the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), a public stand held by the US for more than two decades.
◆The US Department of Defense controls 336 biological laboratories in 30 countries. Inheriting the “devil’s legacy” from the Unit 731, the notorious branch of the Japanese army during the war of aggression against China,the US conducted research and development of biological weapons at Fort Detrick. Despite the entry into force of the BWC in 1975, the US continued with such activities. For more than 20 years, it is the only country opposing the establishment of a multilateral verification mechanism for the BWC, claiming that “the traditional approach … is not a workable structure for biological weapons” and “(the draft Protocol to the BWC) would put national security and confidential business information at risk”. As a State Party to the BWC, the US is obliged to make clarifications on issues of concerns to the international community in accordance with Article V of the Convention.
◆In the working document submitted by the US to the meeting of the State Parties to the BWC in November 2021, the US admitted that it has 26 bio-labs in Ukraine. According to the fact sheet released by the US Department of Defense in March 2022,the US is supporting 46 facilities in Ukraine.
◆The Agreement Between the Department of Defense of the United States of America and the Ministry of Health of Ukraine Concerning Cooperation in the Area of Prevention of Proliferation of Technology, Pathogens and Expertise that could be Used in the Development of Biological Weapons signed by the two countries on 29 August 2005 clearly stipulates that the US Department of Defense representatives shall have the right to participate in all related activities at facilities in Ukraine; all dangerous pathogens in Ukraine shall be stored at designated laboratories; Ukraine shall share with the US data generated by the relevant surveillance network, transfer to the US side requested copies of dangerous pathogen strains, and withhold information designated by the US side as “sensitive” from public disclosure.
◆On March 8, 2022, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland admitted at a Senate hearing that “Ukraine has biological research facilities, which, in fact, we are now quite concerned Russian forces may be seeking to gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.”
◆On March 10, 2022, Tucker Carlson, Fox News Channel host, said that the US government is funding secret bio-labs in Ukraine to conduct research on dangerous pathogens. According to him, the US government has repeatedly denied the claim, calling it Russian disinformation, and the American people have been lied to. But the US government official in charge of Ukraine has confirmed that the information about US funding bio-labs in Ukraine is simply true.
◆On March 18, 2022, Bulgarian journalist Dilyana Gaytandzhieva released an “investigative material” on US-Ukraine cooperation, revealing a substantial amount of details of biological research cooperation between the two countries. For example, the Ukrainian government is prohibited from public disclosure of sensitive information about the Pentagon’s program for bio-labs; the Pentagon has been granted access to certain state secrets of Ukraine in connection with the projects under their agreement; and Ukraine is obliged to transfer to the US Department of Defense dangerous pathogens for biological research.
◆William Scott Ritter, a former UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq and former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, said in an interview that “There is an absolute requirement for stringent confidence-building investigations into what the United States was doing (in the US-led bio labs in Ukraine), so that the world can be confident that the United States operates within the framework (of the BWC)”.
◆During the Korean War, the US military conducted covert germ-warfare operations in northern DPRK and some parts of northeast China. American planes dropped virus carriers such as insects and rats infected with yersinia pestis and vibrio cholerae. During the Vietnam War, the US sprayed about 20 million gallons of defoliant (toxic chemicals such as Agent Orange) in Vietnam, killing 400,000 Vietnamese and leaving 2 million suffering from cancer and other diseases.
◆The US has spread publicly or through US-funded NGOs disinformation on the use of chemical and biological weapons by Iraq and Syria. In an interview with Al Jazeera in 2011, former US Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted before the public that Iraq’s possession of chemical and biological weapons was false information. The US government has long been the main sponsor of the White Helmets, and has instructed the organization to release multiple fake videos of the Syrian government using chemical weapons.
Falsehood 4: China amplifies Russian propaganda by claiming that “the US and NATO caused the Ukraine crisis”.
Reality Check:People of insight in the international community have publicly warned many times about the possible repercussions of the US continuous push for NATO’s eastward expansion.
◆In 1990, then US Secretary of State James Baker, during his meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev, promised clearly that NATO will move “not one inch eastward”. However, under the domination of the United States, NATO has expanded eastward five times since 1999, increased its membership from 16 to 30, and advanced more than 1,000 kilometers eastward right up to Russian borders, creating a C-shaped encirclement of the Black Sea.
◆A document disclosed by the National Archives of Great Britain showed that the US representative had promised in negotiations back then that NATO should not expand to the east either formally or unofficially.
◆Russia has for years proposed dialogue with the United States on a European Security Initiative, only to be ignored by the US side. In 2021, Russia offered multiple times to negotiate and sign a peace agreement with NATO, but was rejected by the United States and NATO.
◆The United States and NATO, while fully aware of Russia’s security concerns, strengthened military assistance to Ukraine and helped it train military personnel.
According to US media reports, former US officials said that the United States has provided a large amount of advanced military training for Ukrainian elite troops and special operation forces. Since 2015, the CIA has conducted a series of intensive military training in Ukraine involving guns, land navigation and camouflage techniques. The program, which began under President Obama, was expanded under President Trump and further enlarged under the Biden administration.
According to Canadian media reports, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) has spent more than 890 million US dollars on training Ukrainian soldiers since 2014, including more than 30,000 Ukrainian troops trained in Zolochiv between February 2019 and February 2022.
https://world.huanqiu.com/article/47Zcn5zwlLa
◆On April 12, 2022, UK Armed Forces Minister James Heappey confirmed that the British military would train Ukrainian soldiers in the UK.
◆The CIA has long been training members of the “Azov Battalion” in a secret place in southern United States. Since 2014, the United States and Ukraine have consistently voted against draft resolutions on combating “neo-Nazism” at the United Nations. In 2015, the House of Representatives of the US Congress lifted the ban on funding the “Azov Battalion” and provided a large amount of military assistance to Ukraine. A report released in 2018 by the Atlantic Council, a US think tank,said that the “Azov Battalion” was among the recipients of weapons and equipment provided by the United States to Ukraine.
◆Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in an op-ed published in The Washington Post in 2014 that “far too often the Ukrainian issue is posed as a showdown: whether Ukraine joins the East or the West. But if Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other – it should function as a bridge between them.”
◆George Kennan, late American diplomat and observer of the Soviet Union, wrote in The New York Times in 1997 that “expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era”.
https://world.huanqiu.com/article/46wKCk9TxKL
◆Former US Senator Bill Bradley said that “the fundamental blunder that the United States made in the late 80s, early 90s was the expansion of NATO”.
◆John Mearsheimer, an American political scientist, pointed out that “the West bears primary responsibility of what is happening today. It was largely a result of a decision in April 2006 to make Ukraine and to make Georgia part of NATO”. He said, “Here I’m talking about the West, we took a stick and we poke the bear in the eye … and that bear is not going to smile and laugh at what you are doing. That bear is probably going to fight back, and that’s exactly what’s happening here.”
◆In an New York Times article on February 21, 2022, Thomas Friedman pointed out that the United States and NATO were not innocent bystanders in the Ukraine crisis, and that the decision of the United States on NATO expansion has added a “huge log” to the conflict in Ukraine.
◆In a speech on February 28, 2022, US Senator Bernie Sanders cited the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis as an example, saying that the Kennedy administration considered the Soviet Union’s deployment of missiles in Cuba 90 miles from the US coast to be an unacceptable threat to US national security. He questioned if anyone really believe that the United States would not have something to say if Mexico, Cuba, or any country in Central or Latin America want to form a military alliance with a US adversary, and that members of Congress would stand up and say, ‘well, you know, Mexico is an independent country, and they have the right to do anything they want'”?
◆Former US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard said in an interview if Joe Biden simply promised not to include Ukraine into NATO, the war would have been prevented.
◆After the World War II, “proxy wars” became a major option for the United States to intervene in the affairs of other countries. The Ukraine crisis manipulated by the United States and NATO is a “proxy war.” Former UK parliamentarian George Galloway said the United States is prepared to let Ukraine fight to the last drop of its blood.
◆Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in an interview with the CNN that there are countries in NATO that want the Ukraine crisis to continue, they see the continuation of the crisis as weakening Russia, and they don’t care much about the situation in Ukraine.
◆Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois in the United States, said that the fundamental problem of the Russia-Ukraine conflict lies in the constant eastward expansion of the US-led NATO. Biden should publicly announce that Ukraine will not join NATO and NATO will not expand, which may lead to a breakthrough in the current situation.
◆On April 11, 2022, Martin Jacques, a well-known UK scholar, said that the current situation in Ukraine is a product of the United States’ Cold War mentality and continued promotion of NATO expansion. It has pushed not only Ukraine but the whole of Europe to the frontline of US-Russia confrontation.
◆Kishore Mahbubani, founding dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, pointed out that the tragedy of the Ukraine conflict is that the armed conflict could and should have been prevented, and that the decisions on NATO expansion were driven by the short-term interests of US domestic politics.
◆Spanish political analyst Manolo Monereo said that the Ukraine conflict has been dominated by the US all along, while its European allies only play their role as a part of NATO.
◆Yunus Sonnell, a Turkish expert on international issues, said that on the surface, the crisis broke out between Russia and Ukraine, but its root lies in the attempt by the US to maintain the unipolar international order as the global hegemonic power, and to squeeze Russia’s living space through NATO’s eastward expansion.
◆South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said that the war could have been avoided if NATO had heeded the warnings from amongst its own leaders and officials over the years that its eastward expansion would lead to greater, not less, instability in the region.
◆Doraisamy Raja, General Secretary of the Communist Party of India, pointed out in an Indian Express article that the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine is rooted in the expansionary logic of the military alliance-NATO.
◆In 1992 when then Russian President Boris Yeltsin paid his first visits to China and the United States following the Soviet disintegration, the countries agreed not to regard each other as adversaries, which basically put Russia’s bilateral relations with China and the United States on the same level. Over the past thirty years, the China-Russia relationship has made great progress, but it is still based on non-alliance, non-confrontation, and non-targeting of third countries. At the same time, US-Russia relations are sliding into a new Cold War.
The main ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP)’s leader Mohamed Nasheed has decided to form a new political party.
Nasheed initiated a separate political movement within MDP, ‘Fikuregge Dhirun’, following his loss in MDP’s presidential primary held back in January. After major conflicts with the government and its policies – all lawmakers from the faction tendered their resignation from MDP on Wednesday.
The move came after Central Henveiru MP Ali Azim was expelled from the party on Tuesday and banned from rejoining for at least one year over involvement in opposition political activities surrounding the Chagos archipelago dispute.
The 12 members who resigned from MDP on Wednesday are;
Parliament’s Deputy Speaker, North Galolhu MP Eva Abdulla
Ungoofaaru MP Mohamed Waheed (Wadde)
North Maafannu MP Imthiyaz Fahumy (Inthi)
West Henveiru MP Hassan Latheef
Hulhudhoo MP Ilyas Labeeb
North Kulhudhuffushi MP Yasir Abdul Latheef
Vilufushi MP Hassan Afeef
Central Maafannu MP Ibrahim Rasheed (Bonde)
Madaveli MP Hussain Firushan
Thoddoo MP Hassan Shiyan (Gita)
North Mahchangoalhi MP Mohamed Rasheed (Boadhigu)
Gadhdhoo MP Ahmed Zahir
All 12 members are close acquittances of Nasheed. MP Hassan Latheef, during a meeting at Bodufenvalhuge on Wednesday, announced Nasheed’s decision to form a new political party. The meeting was attended by supporters of Nasheed.
Should Nasheed form a new political party, that party would be the largest opposition party in terms of members in the parliament, thereby, the minority party. The minority party at present, opposition PPM-PNC coalition has only eight members in the parliament.
Despite the resignation of the 12 MPs, President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih continues to hold full control of the Parliament with 56 MPs.
Multiple members of the main ruling Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) loyal to the party’s leader Mohamed Nasheed have left the party.
The members who resigned from MDP include 12 MPs. They include Deputy Speaker Eva Abdulla, MP Mohamed Waheed, MP Imthiyaz Fahmy (Inthi), MP Hassan Latheef, MP Ilyas Labeeb, MP Yasir Abdul Latheef, MP Hassan Afeef, MP Ibrahim Rasheed (Bonde), MP Hussain Firushan, MP Hassan Shiyan, MP Mohamed Rasheed (Boadhigu), and MP Ahmed Zahir.
They submitted their resignation letters Wednesday.
The move comes after MDP’s parliamentary group had requested action against Inthi, Hassan Latheef, Ilyas, Yasir, and Central Henveiru MP Ali Azim earlier this week, for forming an alliance with the opposition Progressive Party of Maldives (PPM), Jumhoory Party (JP) and Maldives National Party (MNP), after accusing the government of failure to protect the interests of the Maldivian people in the case lodged with the International Tribunal of the Law of the Seas (ITLOS) over the disputed maritime territory between Maldives and Mauritius.
The party’s disciplinary committee decided to expel Azim from the party on Tuesday.
They are all members of Nasheed’s ‘Fikuregge Dhirun’ faction.
However, Nasheed has yet to resign from the party.
Despite the resignation of the 12 MPs, President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih continues to hold full control of the Parliament with 56 MPs.
The Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Cambodia, Samdech Akka Moha Sena Padei Techo Hun Sen, arrived Sunday morning on an official visit to the Maldives at the invitation of H.E. President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih. It is Samdech Techo Prime Minister Hun Sen’s first visit to the Maldives.
The Cambodian Prime Minister and accompanying delegation were received at Velana International Airport (VIA) by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abdulla Shahid (ODRI). The government will hold a ceremony on Monday to officially welcome the Cambodian Prime Minister to the Maldives.
During the visit, President Solih would meet with Samdech Techo Prime Minister Hun Sen and hold official talks on strengthening bilateral cooperation, followed by the exchange of memoranda of understanding (MoUs) between the two countries. President Solih and the Cambodian Prime Minister would also deliver a joint statement on the outcomes of their discussions.
The Maldives and Cambodia established diplomatic relations on September 21, 1995.
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