U.S. Considers Release of Intelligence on China’s Potential Arms Transfer to Russia, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 23, 2023.
By Vivian Salama, William Mauldin and Nancy A. Youssef
Western nations have intelligence that Beijing might end its self-imposed restraint on weapons supplies to Moscow
The Biden administration is considering releasing intelligence it believes shows that China is weighing whether to supply weapons to support Russia’s war in Ukraine, U.S. officials said.
The discussions on public disclosure come ahead of Friday’s United Nations Security Council meeting marking one year since Russia invaded Ukraine. It follows a number of closed-door appeals to China—coordinated among North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies—that culminated in a formal warning delivered over the weekend in Munich to Wang Yi, China’s senior foreign-policy official, by a number of Western officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly.
Mr. Blinken went public with his warning after the meeting, saying in an interview with CBS News that China is seriously exploring supplying arms to Russia.
The Blinken-Wang meeting on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference ended with no sign of common ground on key issues, according to descriptions from people familiar with the sit-down. One of those sources described it as “tense,” with the recent shootdown of a Chinese surveillance balloon overshadowing the conversation.
Mr. Blinken will address the Security Council to mark the anniversary of the Ukraine war. One year ago, Mr. Blinken also spoke to the council and shared U.S. intelligence that pointed toward Russia’s invasion.
The White House National Security Council declined to comment.
In recent weeks, Western nations have picked up on intelligence that Beijing might end its previous self-imposed restraint on weapons supplies to Russia, according to U.S. and European officials, although it appears that China hasn’t yet made a final decision. Beijing had previously been cautious to confine its support to financial assistance and oil purchases, the officials said, but that stance now appears to be shifting, according to the latest intelligence assessments.
“Until now,” a senior Western official said, there “has been a certain amount of ambiguity about what practical help China might give Russia.” The official said that the intelligence the U.S. and its allies have now is “much less ambiguous.”
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin, didn’t respond directly when asked on Wednesday whether China would supply lethal support for Russia’s war effort. “It is a known fact that NATO countries including the U.S. are the biggest source of weaponry for the battlefield in Ukraine, yet they keep claiming that China may be supplying weapons to Russia,” said Mr. Wang.
There are no plans for a follow-up meeting between senior U.S. and Chinese officials at upcoming international gatherings. State Department spokesman Ned Price said Wednesday that Washington is “watching very closely to determine” if China was moving forward with lethal aid to Russia.
With the war approaching the one-year mark, the U.S. has been working with other Western countries to demonstrate its resolve to support Ukraine, increase pressure on Moscow and warn China against getting more involved in supporting Moscow. President Biden on Monday visited Kyiv for the first time since last year’s invasion, promising Washington’s support for Ukraine.
The potential confrontation with China over lethal aid comes amid escalating tensions between Beijing and Washington over the Western campaign to pressure Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Over the past year, China has helped Moscow by buying Russian oil and selling commercial items, such as microchips and drones, that also have military applications.
That China might provide lethal weapons to Russia—based on new intelligence—is a marked departure from the more general dual-use goods that Chinese companies have been providing over the past year, according to U.S. and European officials. The officials declined to detail what the intelligence said.
The latest intelligence assessments have also underscored Beijing’s growing concern over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threatened use of nuclear force, the officials said. Those worries represented the only area of common ground with Western envoys regarding Russia in the Munich meetings. While China has long been wary of emboldening Moscow, it also worries about the economic and political fallout of a failed Russia, the officials said.
The Biden administration, beginning with Russia’s preinvasion military buildup near Ukraine, has released a virtually unprecedented amount of declassified intelligence on Moscow’s military plans, its arms trade with Iran and related topics. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said last week that while “it is way too early to tell,” officials so far haven’t seen any degradation of U.S. intelligence sources because of the releases.
The warning in Munich followed a number of private appeals to China. It was coordinated among the Western allies in the hope that it would stop Beijing from taking the irrevocable step of starting to supply weapons, the officials said.
Though the Biden administration has been working to declassify the intelligence for possible release, no final decision has been made on a public disclosure, or the timing of it, officials said.
The Chinese arms trade is shrouded in secrecy, and it is unclear what weapons Russia might receive. China is a world leader in the production of weapons that have been used heavily in the Ukraine war, including long-range artillery systems, precision multiple rocket launchers, antitank and surface-to-surface missiles and small, tactical drones and loitering munitions.
Russia’s military is suffering from a shortage of ammunition and weapons and is dogged by battlefield problems up and down the chain of command.
U.S. and European officials said Beijing wouldn’t necessarily provide advanced weapons, but would likely backfill what Russian forces have lost on the battlefield in Ukraine, such as ammunition, or have been unable to produce because of sanctions, such as electronics.
“It’s not an issue of technology,” said Vasily Kashin, a China specialist and the director of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics. “It’s primarily an issue of production capacity. And in terms of production capacity, China, in many aspects, especially if we talk about ground-forces weapons, might be stronger than Russia and the whole of NATO combined.”
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Thursday that the U.S. would continue to warn Chinese government officials, companies and banks about the potential consequences of helping Russia evade U.S. sanctions.
“With respect to sanctions and aid to Russia, we have made clear that providing material support to Russia or assistance with any type of systemic sanctions evasion would be a very serious concern to us,” Ms. Yellen said during a press conference in Bengaluru, India.
Mr. Blinken’s warning about potential weapons transfers came days before Mr. Wang visited Moscow, one of a number of top-level meetings between China and Russia, and as Beijing prepares to release its own blueprint for ending the war in Ukraine.
Beijing has said it would release on Feb. 24, the one-year anniversary of the invasion, details of a proposal to bring peace in Ukraine, though the notion of China acting as a mediator has been met with deep skepticism in the U.S. and Europe.
Mr. Putin announced on Wednesday that Xi Jinping, China’s leader, will visit Russia.
Western analysts doubt China’s ability to be a credible mediator in the conflict, pointing to its obvious bias toward Russia. Since the Russian invasion, Mr. Xi has yet to talk with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, while he has spoken with Mr. Putin multiple times during the period.
At the U.N., Washington officials are backing a resolution demanding that Russia “immediately, completely, and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders and calls for a cessation of hostilities.”
One Western official said U.S. allies are hoping to get more than 130 votes on Thursday.
Such resolutions in the General Assembly don’t have binding force, in contrast with Security Council resolutions. Still, U.S. officials hope that a message from the majority of U.N. member states will show broad opposition to Russia’s invasion and begin to outline a blueprint for peace that includes Russia’s withdrawal.
“They are a pariah state right now, and if they want to move forward in this world they have to end this war,” U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, told reporters. “A strong vote in the General Assembly will send that message to them in no uncertain terms.”
Warren P. Strobel, Brett Forrest and James T. Areddy contributed to this article.