Chinese and Russian officials rebuke NATO communique filled with ‘belligerent rhetoric’

Moscow and Beijing officials have issued rebukes of NATO amid its 75th anniversary summit taking place this week, following the release of the alliance’s communique on Wednesday.

Russia is considered the primary threat to the alliance, but the communique also featured a strong rebuke of China, which members said was proving to be a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s war in Ukraine. The alliance had largely not viewed Beijing as a threat to the alliance until recent years.

“The NATO Washington Summit Declaration is filled with Cold War mentality and belligerent rhetoric,” a spokesperson for the Chinese Mission to the EU said. “The China-related paragraphs are provocative with obvious lies and smears. We firmly reject and deplore these accusations and have lodged serious representations with NATO.”

A senior NATO official told reporters Tuesday that they had not seen evidence that Beijing was providing Moscow with lethal aid, as North Korea and Iran have done over the course of the war. Yet, as the communique lays out, China’s “large-scale support for Russia’s defense industrial base” has been a game-changer for Russia.

The alliance has accused Beijing of trying to act as a neutral arbiter in the war only to indirectly support Russia’s war by aiding its defense industrial base.

“We never provide lethal weapons to either party of the conflict, and exercise strict export control on dual-use goods including civilian drones,” the Chinese official added. “China’s position on Ukraine is open and aboveboard. We aim to promote peace talks and seek political settlement.”

Russian officials similarly accused NATO of not supporting peace, a distortion of events given that Russian forces invaded Ukraine with the intent to topple the government and take over in February 2022. Russian leaders have often claimed that NATO’s growth prompted the war, though NATO only agreed to bring Finland and Sweden into the alliance until after the war had begun.

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Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov argued that the NATO communique suggests “they are not supporters of peace,” and he accused the alliance of being “an instrument for confrontation and not a tool for security provision.”

Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, told the NATO public forum that Russian President Vladimir Putin believes he can still outlast NATO’s support for Ukraine, even though the communique stated that Ukraine is on the “irreversible” path to NATO membership once the war ends.