March 22, 2023 - Russia-Ukraine news

Japan will provide $30 million to help Ukraine acquire non-lethal equipment, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said, according to public broadcaster NHK.

Kishida made the announcement Tuesday at a joint news conference with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during his surprise visit to Kyiv, NHK reported. 

Kishida's unexpected trip to Ukraine Tuesday was announced as Chinese leader Xi Jinping held talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

His visit was the first from a Japanese prime minister to a country or region with ongoing fighting since World War II, according to NHK. It was also the first visit to Ukraine by an Asian member of the G7 grouping and the first by a United States ally in the region.

The dual visits by Kishida and Xi underscore deep divisions in northeast Asia toward the war in Ukraine, with Japan pledging substantial aid for Kyiv, while China remains a lone voice supporting an increasingly isolated Putin — now a global pariah and suspected war criminal.

Kishida is scheduled to travel to Poland on Wednesday.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping has departed Russia and is heading back to China, according to Chinese state media outlet CCTV. 

It brings an end to a three-day state visit in which the Chinese leader and Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged to deepen ties in a show of unity that has heightened concerns Beijing will provide cover for the Kremlin's war in Ukraine.

As two autocrats traded tributes over a feast of quail, venison, Siberian white salmon and pomegranate sorbet, China and Russia seemed to conjure the anti-Western compact the US has long feared.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s state visit this week to his friend, President Vladimir Putin, came at a critical moment of Russia’s quagmire war in Ukraine and of Beijing’s emergence as a great power whose influence now stretches far beyond Asia.

The entire visit has been refracted through a prism of both nations’ mutual antagonism toward the United States. And at every step, Washington, watching hawkishly from the sidelines, poured scorn on the idea of China as a peacemaker in Ukraine, accusing Xi of offering diplomatic cover to a thuggish Russian leader who was just cited for war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

But whether China and Russia have truly forged the kind of united anti-US front long dreaded by Washington’s foreign policy professionals seems doubtful.

Still, the United States clearly now has a serious foreign policy challenge on its hands. The US is simultaneously gearing up for what many experts warn could become a Cold War with China and waging a proxy fight in Ukraine with its foe in the 20th century’s version of that showdown. And China and Russia, together, have more capacity to frustrate American goals in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Xi and Putin are united on a core foreign policy priority — discrediting and even dismantling a world order that they believe is built on Western hypocrisy and denies them due respect as great global powers. This resentment has festered in Putin’s mind ever since the Soviet Union collapsed, and he has tried for years to reshape the international system. But according to Biden’s national security strategy, China is the only US competitor with “the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to” reshape that order.

Read the full analysis here.

The Ukrainian soldiers waved and honked their horns as they drove along a dirt road at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, moving their vehicles into position to defend against a hypothetical Russian missile barrage.

These were not ordinary trucks, however. The Ukrainians were manning a US Patriot air defense system, which 65 Ukrainian soldiers have been training on intensively for 10 weeks, instructed by US Army trainers at the base.

CNN was invited to witness the training on Tuesday, just days ahead of the Ukrainians’ expected graduation from the expedited course. The training at Fort Sill is the only location on US soil where the US is instructing the Ukrainians on US weapons systems. But video and photographs of the training were prohibited, to protect the identities of the Ukrainians who will be heading home to defend their country against Russian forces within the next month.

The Ukrainians have excelled, officials said. They learned the basics of the Patriot system so quickly that they were given extra, intensive training rarely afforded to their American counterparts completing the same course, the officials added.

Read more here.

The deepening relationship between China and Russia was due in large part to their mutual interest in challenging the US' global influence, John Kirby, National Security Council spokesperson, told CNN's Christiane Amanpour Tuesday. 

Kirby's remarks come as Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin forge closer ties in Moscow in a show of unity that has heightened Western concerns that Beijing will provide cover for Russia's war in Ukraine.

In a joint statement released by China’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday, Xi and Putin said their partnership is in the “fundamental interests” of both countries, adding that “Russia needs a prosperous and stable China, and China needs a strong and successful Russia.”

The United States defers to Ukraine’s leadership in its prioritization of the hard-fought battle for Bakhmut, and will continue to ensure the country's president has “what he needs, wherever he chooses to fight, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Tuesday.

Asked by CNN’s Christiane Amanpour whether Kyiv was spending too much time in the fight for Bakhmut, Kirby said Ukrainians are still "bravely fighting" in the eastern city and the area is "very vicious."

Battles to come: Ukraine is preparing to launch a spring offensive against Russian forces, built largely around the more powerful and more advanced systems Western countries have agreed to send, including tanks and other armored vehicles.

Kirby said the coming weeks would be "critical," in the war and the US expected Russian President Vladimir Putin would "try to mount another offensive and maybe along many different vectors."

"We have got to make sure that we are doing everything we can to make sure Ukraine is ready for that," he said.

Kirby said the US wants to ensure Ukrainians can defend themselves against any renewed Russian offensive while also having the flexibility to "conduct offensive operations of their own at a time and place and a size and a scale of their choosing."

Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed "serious concerns" about the AUKUS security pact and NATO, according to a joint statement released by China’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday following talks between the two leaders in Moscow.

The joint statement said China and Russia urged AUKUS members Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States to “strictly fulfill their obligations not to proliferate weapons of mass destruction.”

The multi-decade AUKUS deal aims to counter China’s rapid military expansion. Under the plan, the partners will build a combined fleet of elite nuclear-powered submarines using technology, labor and funding from all three countries, creating a more formidable force in the Indo-Pacific than any of them could achieve alone.

In the joint statement, Xi and Putin also said their partnership is in the “fundamental interests” of both countries, adding that “Russia needs a prosperous and stable China, and China needs a strong and successful Russia.”

Leaders on NATO: Xi and Putin also expressed serious concerns about NATO’s “continuous strengthening of military-security ties with Asia-Pacific countries” and said they “oppose external military forces undermining regional peace and stability.”

A year after Russia invaded Ukraine, Xi's backing of Putin has opened the door for the US and partners in the Pacific to shore up sometimes frayed relationships to the detriment of Beijing.

In the past few months alone, Japan has pledged to double defense spending and acquire long-range weapons from the US; South Korea has acknowledged that stability in the Taiwan Strait is essential to its security; the Philippines has announced new US base access rights and is talking about joint patrols of the South China Sea with Australia, Japan and the United States.

The White House rejected China’s claim to hold an impartial position in the war in Ukraine following a summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Moscow.

Earlier, Xi said Beijing held an impartial position in the war after lengthy talks with Putin in Moscow.

The United States held a skeptical view of the summit, particularly China’s stated goal of acting as a peacemaker. Kirby said if China wanted to play a constructive role, it would use its influence to urge Russia to end the war.

Biden “wants to keep the lines of communication open with China” and will speak with Xi “at the appropriate time,” Kirby said.

US officials are still digesting the language of the joint statement released following the Xi-Putin meeting, but Kirby said there was little optimism at the summit’s conclusions.

“We haven't seen anything that they've said, they put forward, that gives us hope that this war is going to end anytime soon,” he said.

Talks between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin continued Tuesday as Western leaders closely monitored day two of Xi's three-day Moscow visit.

Here's what happened Tuesday: