How dreadfully embarrassing for Xi Jinping!

He has somehow managed to keep a straight face while insisting that he is not aiding Vladimir Putin in the furtherance of Russia’s war against Ukraine, despite refusing to speak out against it.

He also ignores the fact that he has continued to boost Russia’s economy — and therefore its military budget — by remaining the largest customer for its oil and gas.

And there’s that little matter of Chinese dual-purpose technology being provided to Russia’s military for use against Ukraine, which Xi shrugs off as being untrue . . . while welcoming officials from Ukraine’s Russian-occupied territories at trade shows where Chinese manufacturers sell heavy equipment to Russian companies operating in those territories. [Id.]

But now he has been caught in yet another lie, and it will be interesting to see how he squirms out of this one . . . or whether he even tries.

Ukraine’s intelligence service announced earlier this month that a 24-year-old Chinese man and his father had been arrested for attempting to obtain classified information about the Neptune missile program and deliver it to Chinese intelligence.

The younger man — who had been expelled from a Ukrainian technical school two years earlier — had befriended a defense worker in an attempt to gain access to the information, which his father would then pass on to the Chinese authorities. [Todd Prince, RFE/RL, July 25, 2025.]

(There is no explanation as to why the pair were still in Ukraine after the student’s expulsion.)

This comes on the heels of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s imposition of sanctions on five Chinese companies for aiding Russia’s war effort.

While it had been hoped by Ukraine and its Western allies that Xi would be able to use his leverage with Putin to assist in ceasefire talks, it has become evident that that’s simply not going to happen, as Xi needs Putin’s war to continue drawing U.S. attention away from China.

His Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, admitted as much earlier this month at a meeting in Brussels with EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, when Wang is reported to have said that Beijing could not accept a defeat of Russia in the war because it would leave Washington free to focus on China. [Id.]

China’s protestations of neutrality are no longer believable. The world knows they are buying Russian fuels, selling them military technology, and sending their spies into Ukraine.

In the words of Oleksandr Merezhko, chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee:

“At the very beginning, there was some hope China could be involved in the [peace] process. But now we’ve become more realistic and speak more openly: China supports Russia.”

So you are free, President Xi, to erase the inscrutable smile from your public face; you are fooling no one.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
7/26/25