Blinken urges Chinese counterpart to 'stand up' to Russia

Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi to "stand up" to Russia during a Saturday meeting in Indonesia, The New York Times reports.

After the meeting, which lasted more than five hours, Blinken told reporters that Wang had repeated Chinese claims to neutrality in the war between Russia and Ukraine. "I would start with the proposition that it's pretty hard to be neutral when it comes to this aggression. There's a clear aggressor. There's a clear victim," Blinken said.

The secretary of state also told reporters he had "tried to convey" to Wang "that this really is a moment where we all have to stand up" and condemn Russian aggression.

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Three weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, Russia and China released a joint statement opposing NATO expansion and condemning the alliance's "ideologized cold war approaches" to international relations. The statement did not mention Ukraine directly. In May, Russia surpassed Saudi Arabia as China's top supplier of oil.