Any nation providing lethal support to Moscow in its ongoing conflict with Kiev would cross Washington’s “red line,” the US envoy to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told CNN on Sunday. Earlier the same day, US State Secretary Antony Blinken directly warned a top Chinese diplomat, Wang Yi, against considering such an option.
“We … have to be clear that if there are any thoughts and efforts by the Chinese and others to provide lethal support to the Russians in their brutal attack against Ukraine, that that is unacceptable,” Thomas-Greenfield told CNN’s ‘State of the Union,’ adding that it “would be a red line.”
Her words came as Blinken was meeting Wang Yi on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in Germany. There, the US diplomat told his Chinese counterpart that the US was “very concerned that China’s considering providing lethal support to Russia,” Blinken told NBC’s Chuck Todd in the wake of the meeting.
“I made clear that that would have serious consequences in our relationship,” the state secretary added. He also claimed that the US was aware of Beijing providing Moscow wit nonlethal assistance “over these past months,” adding that this aid allegedly goes “directly to aiding and abetting Russia’s war effort.”