Will China Provide Russia With Lethal Aid for the War Against Ukraine?

A Russian serviceman patrols the destroyed Ilyich Iron and Steel Works in Ukraine’s port city of Mariupol on May 18, 2022.
OLGA MALTSEVA/AFP via Getty Images

Will China Provide Russia With Lethal Aid for the War Against Ukraine?

Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on February 22 that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is “increasingly concerned” that China is preparing to support Russia’s war against Ukraine by supplying weapons and munitions.

Speaking at a joint press conference, Stoltenberg said Moscow has shown no indication that it will end its war. He discussed Russia’s new offensives and its outreach to North Korea and Iran for weaponry as signs that the Kremlin remains fully committed to winning. He added: “We are also increasingly concerned that China may be planning to provide lethal support for Russia’s war.” The statement followed claims by United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week that U.S. intelligence showed Beijing preparing to supply Moscow with weapons and munitions.

The specific Chinese items that Russia might receive have not been disclosed. But China has become a lead nation in the manufacture of the main types of armaments that have been used in Russia’s war, including precision multiple rocket launchers, loitering munitions, long-range artillery systems, antitank and surface-to-surface missiles and tactical drones.

Vasily Kashin, a senior research fellow at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, said: “[I]n terms of production capacity, China, in many aspects, especially if we talk about ground-forces weapons, might be stronger than Russia and the whole of nato combined.”

If China provides overt lethal aid to Russia, it would throw a major lifeline to the forces that are suffering shortages of weapons and ammunition. Such a move would also follow a year of increasing Chinese energy purchases from Russia, diplomatic backing from Beijing, and tens of thousands of shipments of “dual-use” items that China has already delivered to Russia. “[W]e’ve seen already over these past months the provision of nonlethal assistance that does go directly to aiding and abetting Russia’s war effort,” Blinken said on nbc’s Meet the Press.

Blinken will address the United Nations Security Council on February 24 on the one-year anniversary of Russia’s war on Ukraine. American officials are backing a UN resolution that calls for Russia to “immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders and calls for a cessation of hostilities.” They are expected to obtain more than 130 votes for the resolution.

But with Russia firmly backed by China, even such a large number of votes would mean little.

The support that China is providing Russia has caught some unawares, particularly since it jeopardizes the Western trade that the Chinese economy depends so heavily on. But the Trumpet and our forerunner publication, the Plain Truth, have warned for over 60 years that Russian-Chinese cooperation would increase.

The December 1959 issue of the Plain Truth said China’s “constant dream for centuries has been ultimate world conquest! … China knows, however, that in this highly industrialized age she can accomplish this dream only as an ally of Russia. [Russian leaders] will ultimately control not only the Russian states, but China … and India as well!”

For decades, the Plain Truth and Trumpet have reiterated this same basic forecast with confidence because our understanding is built on an intelligence source utterly unlike those used by most analysts: the Bible.

Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry explained in “Asia Still Stands With Putin” from the May-June 2022 issue:

Ezekiel 38:2 foretold the Russian power we now see rising, led by a rō’š nāśî’ (or “prince of Russia”). This scripture also mentions “the land of Magog,” which includes modern China and other nations. This indicates that this Russian leader will rally other Asian peoples behind Moscow.

The prophecy Ezekiel recorded was for the end time. It specifies that Russia will be the leader of this massive Asian alliance. That is a key to understanding today’s geopolitics. … Another key scripture to understand is Revelation 9:16, a prophecy that the end-time “kings of the east” Asian power bloc will field the largest military in history. It comes from the same regions described in Ezekiel 38, and China, India and Russia have the only populations that could produce a combined army of 200 million troops.

A military force of 200 million men is far more than Russia could ever field from its own population. But once the hundreds of millions from China’s population are factored in, building an army of that size under “Prince” Vladimir Putin’s lead becomes easily attainable. To better understand what lies ahead for the nations of the East, read “Asia Still Stands With Putin” and order your free copy of The Prophesied ‘Prince of Russia.’