Russia-Ukraine War: The United Kingdom claimed on Wednesday that China is sending “lethal aid” to Russia for use in its war against Ukraine. Speaking at a London conference, Britain’s defence minister Grant Shapps said on Wednesday, “Today I can reveal that we have evidence that Russia and China are collaborating on combat equipment for use in Ukraine,” as quoted by news agency AFP. Shapps warned that NATO needed to “wake up” and bolster defence spending across the alliance.

“US and British defence intelligence can reveal that lethal aid is now flowing from China to Russia and into Ukraine,” he said. He also argued that democratic states should make a “full-throated case” for freedoms that are dependent on the international order, meaning “we need more allies and partners” worldwide.

“It’s time for the world to wake up. And that means translating this moment into concrete plans and capabilities. And that starts with laying the foundations for an alliance-wide increase in spending on our collective deterrent,” he said, as quoted by AFP.

United States President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan reacted to Shapps’s comments, saying that the possibility that Beijing might “provide weapons directly—lethal assistance—to Russia” had been a concern earlier, but that “we have not seen that to date,” as reported by AFP.

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Sullivan further stated that the US did have a “concern about what China’s doing to fuel Russia’s war machine, not giving weapons directly, but providing inputs to Russia’s defence industrial base”.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin met each other in Beijing earlier this month. The Chinese President said following talks with Putin during his visit that the two sides agreed on the need for a “political solution” to resolve the war.