Putin ‘betrayed’ by China’s Xi Jinping as propagandists question Zelenskyy call

2023-05-01

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has called Volodomyr Zelenskyy in a bid to broker peace in Ukraine – leading to a massive backlash from supporters of Vladimir Putin.

Xi’s telephone talks with the Ukrainian president has outraged Putin’s propaganda cheerleaders.

China has refused to condemn Russia’s invasion but instead says it wants to act as a mediator. Zelenskyy described his talks with Xi as “long and meaningful”.

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But war analyst Sergei Mardan on Putin propaganda talk channel SolovyevLive said Xi’s state visit to Moscow last month had undermined the Kremlin.

Temur Umarov, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace thinktank, has called the friendship between Putin and Xi a “strategic bromance”. Xi had previously described Putin as his “best friend” and has said that their characters quite similar.

In an official joint statement following their meeting on March 21, Xi and Putin said: “The Russian side welcomes China’s willingness to play a positive role for the political and diplomatic settlement of the Ukraine crisis and welcomes the constructive proposals set forth in China’s position on the political settlement of the Ukraine Crisis.”

According to Mardan, Russia had “joy and confidence” that Xi was their ally and saw Zelenskyy as a Western “puppet”.

Putin’s supporters believed Xi would “definitely not” phone Zelenskyy and that the Chinese leader’s visit to Moscow was “our Russian victory”.

“And then boom – this,” he told viewers.

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“How do we take this call?" he asked. "Why did he call our enemy?

“Comrade Xi Jinping, why did you come to Moscow?

“And spend three days here, interrupting Putin’s work?

“So as a result of his three-day stay in Moscow, he goes back to his Beijing, spends a week talking to his advisors – and then decides to call Zelensky.

“What are we supposed to think? Do we have friendship, or what?”

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The slap down for Xi comes as Putin’s supporters also feel aggrieved that despite previous promises of an alliance between the two former communist countries, China has not sent advanced weapons and drones to help Russia’s faltering war effort.

Russia and China have been moving closer to a formal military alliance for some time. Back in 2021, Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chinese Defence Minister General Wei Fenghe agreed a series of joint exercises and patrols across the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan.

In March, US President Joe Biden told reporters: “I’ve been hearing now for the past three months China is going to provide significant weapons to Russia… They haven’t yet. Doesn’t mean they won’t but they haven’t yet".

The SolovyevLive channel is fronted by Vladimir Solovyov, Putin’s favourite state TV propagandist, while Mardan is military analyst for the pro-Kremlin Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.

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