中文
This is an editorial from China Daily.
In partnership with the United Kingdom and European Union, the Joe Biden administration announced more than 600 sanctions and penalties on Russia and its military industry on Friday — the largest round of sanctions since Russia launched its "special military operation" in Ukraine two years ago.
That John Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council of the United States, said the sanctions were devised to "hold Russia accountable" for the Ukraine crisis should serve to lay bare the fact that the US does not want to put an end to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. A key objective of the sanctions is to continue to prolong the fighting with the aim of weakening Russia while weaving the EU deeper into the US' geopolitical stratagems.
Compared with previous US sanctions, the new sanctions mainly target entities in and out of Russia that the Biden administration claims are connected to businesses providing materials to the Russian military. For instance, Friday's sanctions include 26 entities outside of Russia and people in 11 countries, including China, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam and Liechtenstein.
That means the US will also continue to take the Ukraine crisis as a pretext to weaponize sanctions against other countries for its own narrow ends, despite the tremendous damage that has been done to the global industry and supply chains by the US' practices.
The US' sanctions against Russia, which are of coercive, bullying and hegemonistic nature, are nothing but a unilateral multipronged geopolitical tool that actually has no support from the United Nations or any other country or international organization outside of the US club. Washington's double standard in imposing the sanctions is evidenced by its open connivance with India importing large amounts of Russian oil and gas and then reselling the fuel around the world, including to the EU.
That being said, it is ridiculous that US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns should point an accusatory finger at China, claiming Chinese companies "fuel Russia's defense industrial complex" and try to smear it by claiming China provides support for "Moscow's fundamental break with the United Nations Charter".
China does not provide weapons to either side in the conflict, but carries out normal and legal trade with them both at the same time, which the US side has no ground at all for objecting to.
And it is the US that is taking advantage of the Ukraine crisis to profiteer, not only to maximize its own economic and geopolitical benefits, but also to justify its sanctions on Chinese entities and coerce others to shun China.
China has been one of the most outspoken and active major countries in pursuit of a workable, lasting and sustainable peace mechanism to settle the Ukraine crisis from day one. Contrary to Burns' claim, it is the US' silence in response to the widespread charges of its brazen hypocrisy in relation to the Ukraine and Gaza crises that is truly "deafening".
