Oliver Towfigh Nia
20 February 2023•Update: 20 February 2023
BERLIN
Germany has no evidence that China is planning to send lethal arms to Russia for its war on Ukraine, a government spokesman said on Monday.
“Such information is not available to us,” Steffen Hebestreit told reporters in Berlin.
“Nevertheless, we have, of course, taken note of (US Secretary of State) Antony Blinken’s statements on this issue, also with a certain degree of concern if it turns out to be true, but we have no evidence of that at the moment.”
He referred to a meeting between Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Wang Yi, Beijing’s top foreign policy official, at the Munich Security Conference, where the German leader welcomed the fact that China has so far refrained from supplying any lethal weapons to Russia.
Separately on Monday, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said at a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers in Brussels that any likely Chinese military support for Russia would be a “a red line in our relationships.”
Borrell said he discussed the issue with Wang in Munich over the weekend, who reassured him that Beijing had no such plans.
“But we will remain vigilant,” he said.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Monday urged the US to “stop deflecting the blame and spreading disinformation.”
“We urge the US side to seriously reflect on the role it has played, do something to actually help de-escalate the situation and promote peace talks,” Wang Wenbin, a ministry spokesperson, said at a briefing.
“It is the US, not China, that has been pouring weapons into the battlefield. The US is in no position to tell China what to do. We would never stand for finger-pointing, or even coercion and pressurizing from the US on our relations with Russia.”
