China President Xi Jinping is scheduled to travel to Moscow today (March 20), giving Russian President Vladimir Putin an important diplomatic boost. The visit by Xi comes in the midst of escalating East-West tensions over the 13-month-old war in Ukraine and is the most recent indication of Beijing's reinvigorated diplomatic goals.
The US declared on Friday it would oppose any attempt by China to establish a truce in Ukraine at the meeting that amounts to a "ratification of Russian annexation" of Ukrainian territory, reported the Associated Press.
Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, told his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday (January 24) as Ukraine marked 11 months of war that Russian athletes should have "no place" at the 2024 Paris Olympics. "I particularly emphasised that athletes from Russia should have no place at the Olympic Games in Paris," Zelensky wrote on Telegram following a telephone call with Macron.
On February 24, 2022, only a few days after the Beijing Winter Olympics' closing ceremony, Russia began its invasion of Ukraine.
Russia has stepped up attacks in Ukraine's eastern town of Soledar, in the Donbas region, where the Ukrainian forces are trying to repel the double onslaught by the mercenary Wagner Group and the Russian forces.
In the latest, authorities that support Russia claimed that on Saturday night, Ukraine assaulted the city of seized Melitopol in the southeast of the nation (December 10). Multiple explosions have reportedly been detected in the city's strategically positioned neighbourhood, according to some of the Moscow-installed authorities. In other news, The first lunar rover from the United Arab Emirates and a toy-like Japanese robot that is designed to roll around in space in the grey dust were launched on board a SpaceX rocket by a Tokyo business on Sunday