BEIJING: China and Russia should jointly safeguard their security and development interests, Chinese President Xi Jinping told the visiting Russian parliament speaker on Tuesday, in their efforts to build a more “equitable” international order.
The two sides should continue their traditional friendship and deepen strategic mutual trust, state-run Xinhua news agency quoted Xi as saying.
US President Donald Trump said earlier this week that he might impose “massive” sanctions on Russia in two weeks depending on whether progress was possible in his bid to end Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Trump held a summit with President Vladimir Putin in Alaska earlier this month, but has been
Unable to coax him into a meeting with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.
On Monday, Trump said China had to give the United States rare earth magnets or “we have to charge them 200 percent tariff or something.”
Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of Russia’s lower house of parliament the State Duma, arrived in China on Monday ahead of Putin’s visit to China this weekend, where he will cross paths with tens of Global South world leaders, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at a security forum.
Indian exporters are bracing for additional 25 percent US tariffs from Wednesday as punishment for New Delhi’s purchases of Russian oil.
Russia and China should “unite” the countries in the Global South, Xi told Volodin, a key domestic ally of Putin’s.
Putin will also be the principal foreign guest of honor at a military parade in Beijing next week marking the formal surrender of Japan and the end of World War Two.
Ahead of what is set to be a massive public showcase of China’s modernizing armed forces, Beijing has mounted a campaign saying China and the former Soviet Union played a pivotal role in the Asian and European theaters during World War Two.
China-Russia relations serve as a “source of stability for world peace,” said Xi.
China, Russia should safeguard security, development interests, says Xi
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China, Russia should safeguard security, development interests, says Xi
- Two sides should continue their traditional friendship and deepen strategic mutual trust
- China’s leader: Russia and China should ‘unite’ the countries in the Global South
Afghan hunger crisis deepens as aid funding falls short, UN says
- International aid to war-torn Afghanistan has dwindled significantly since 2021
- “For the first time in decades, WFP cannot launch a significant winter response,” the UN agency said
KABUL: The UN World Food Programme is unable for the first time in decades to provide effective aid to millions of Afghans suffering from malnutrition, with deaths especially among children likely to rise this winter, the WFP said on Tuesday.
International aid to war-torn Afghanistan has dwindled significantly since 2021, when US-led forces exited the country and the Taliban regained power. The crisis has been compounded by multiple natural calamities such as earthquakes.
“For the first time in decades, WFP cannot launch a significant winter response, while also scaling up emergency and nutrition support nationwide,” the UN agency said in a statement, adding that it needed over $460 million to deliver food assistance to six million most vulnerable Afghans.
“With child malnutrition already at its highest level in decades, and unprecedented reductions in (international) funding for agencies providing essential services, access to treatment is increasingly scarce,” it said.
Child deaths are likely to rise during Afghanistan’s freezing winter months when food is scarcest, it said.
The WFP estimates that 17 million people face hunger, up about 3 million from last year, a rise driven in part by millions of Afghans deported from neighboring Iran and Pakistan under programs to send back migrants and refugees.
Humanitarian agencies have warned that Afghanistan lacks the infrastructure to absorb a sudden influx of returnees.
“We are only 12 percent funded. This is an obstacle,” Jean-Martin Bauer, WFP Director of Food Security and Nutrition Analysis, told a press briefing in Geneva. He added that 3.7 million Afghan children were acutely malnourished, 1 million of whom were severe cases. “So yes, children are dying,” he said.
