In September 24th, the next-to-last day of the world leaders’ annual gathering at United Nations headquarters in New York, the headline speakers addressing the General Assembly were the foreign ministers of China and Russia. Foreign Ministers Wang Yi of China and Sergey Lavrov of Russia excused their autocratic regimes’ aggressive behavior and condemned anyone who would try to meddle in what they consider to be their own internal affairs.
Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, discussed China’s reunification plans for Taiwan at some length. “China will continue to endeavor to achieve peaceful reunification with the greatest sincerity and greatest efforts,” he said. “To realize this goal, we must combat ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist activities with the firmest resolve and take the most forceful steps to repulse interference by external groups.” This was a veiled warning to the United States to butt out of what the Chinese regime considers to be a matter vital to protecting its territorial integrity and national sovereignty.
“Since ancient times,” China’s foreign minister declared, “Taiwan has been an inalienable part of China’s territory. China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity has never been severed and the fact that the mainland and Taiwan belong to one and same China has never changed. All of us Chinese have never ceased our efforts to realize China’s reunification.”
Without mentioning the United States specifically this time, Wang Yi repeated a criticism that the Chinese regime has often leveled at the U.S. He said that democracy and human rights should not be used as “tools or weapons to achieve political ends” and decried “bullying.”
When it was Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s turn to speak, he came out swinging against the United States and its Western allies and shifted the blame for the Ukraine crisis to them. “The United States and allies want to stop the march of history. . . . they’ve erected themselves into an almost envoy of God on earth without any obligations but only the sacred right to act with impunity wherever they want,” Mr. Lavrov declared.
Russia’s foreign minister hewed to the Russian regime’s party line in claiming that the so-called “special military operation” was launched for two purposes. The first purpose was to protect Russians and other people living in eastern Ukraine who wanted to preserve the Russian way of life. Mr. Lavrov alleged that Kyiv had sought to ban the Russian language, education, and culture and had launched attacks against people living in Donbas. The second purpose of the so-called “special military operation” was to eliminate threats to Russian security allegedly caused by the expansion of the United States-led NATO military alliance eastward, closer to the Russian borders. He harkened back to what he described as the “bloody coup” by the current “Kyiv regime” in 2014 and accused Western powers of engaging in “grotesque” Russophobia with the intent to “destroy and fracture Russia.”
Foreign Minister Lavrov also mocked the West for “throwing a fit” over the referendums being conducted in the Donbas and other Russian-controlled areas on the question of whether to secede from Ukraine and become a part of the Russian Federation.
Russia’s foreign minister blamed the West for raising the nuclear issue, despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s hint that nuclear weapons could be used if necessary to defend all of Russia. When asked whether that would include the Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine that Russia annexes, he said that the “entire territory of the Russian Federation is under the full protection of the state,” which would include any territories that Russia annexes. He referred reporters to Russia’s written policy governing the use of nuclear weapons.
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