Chinese President Xi Jinping personally warned Vladimir Putin, his Russian counterpart, against using nuclear weapons in Ukraine during his visit to Moscow in March, according to a report in the FT, that was also run in the Kiev Independent, which cited Western and Chinese officials, with the latter said to have privately taken credit for getting Putin to back down from his nuclear blackmail after multiple veiled and open threats to use such weapons.
On Wednesday, the Kremlin denied the report, with Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “No, I can’t confirm it”, adding that statements were issued at the time and all other reports were “fiction”, according to The Guardian, which said Xi told German chancellor Olaf Scholz in November that the international community should oppose the use or threat to use such weapons and “prevent a nuclear crisis in Eurasia”. Biden reportedly agreed that nuclear weapons should not be used in Ukraine when they met in Bali a week later.
Read the full report: The FT.
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