US is using Taiwan to stir crisis in Asia, says Russia

The United States is using Taiwan to provoke a serious crisis in Asia, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko told TASS news agency in remarks published on Sunday, reiterating Moscow’s backing of China’s stance on Taiwan.

“We see that Washington, in violation of the ‘one China’ principle that it recognises, is strengthening military-political contacts with Taipei under the slogan of maintaining the ‘status quo’, and increasing arms supplies,” Rudenko told the state news agency.

“The goal of such obvious US interference in the region’s affairs is to provoke the PRC (People’s Republic of China) and generate a crisis in Asia to suit its own selfish interests.”

The report did not cite any specific contacts that Rudenko was referring to.

China views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory, a claim that Taiwan’s government rejects. The US is Taiwan’s most important international backer and arms supplier, despite the lack of formal diplomatic recognition.

The US State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Rudenko’s remarks outside office hours. In September, President Joe Biden approved $567 million in military support for Taiwan.

Russia responded that it was standing alongside China on Asian issues, including criticism of the US drive to extend its influence and “deliberate attempts” to inflame the situation around Taiwan.

China and Russia declared a “no limits” partnership in February 2022 when President Vladimir Putin visited Beijing shortly before launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, triggering the deadliest land war in Europe since World War Two.

In May this year, Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping pledged a “new era” of partnership between the two most powerful rivals of the United States, which they cast as an aggressive Cold War hegemon sowing chaos across the world.

Meanwhile, Japan’s Kyodo news agency reported on Sunday that Tokyo and Washington aim to compile a joint military plan for a possible Taiwan emergency that includes deploying missiles.

Under the plan expected to be complied next month, the U.S. would deploy missile units to the Nansei Islands of Japan’s southwestern Kagoshima and Okinawa prefectures, and to the Philippines, the report said, citing unnamed US and Japanese sources.

The US Marine Corps’ Marine Littoral Regiment, which has High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and other weapons, will be deployed to the Nansei Islands, Kyodo said.

A US unit dealing with space, cyberspace and electromagnetic waves will be stationed in the Philippines, the report said.

Calls to Japan’s defence ministry and the embassies in Tokyo of the US and the Philippines were not answered on Sunday.

Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te will visit the self-governing island’s allies in the South Pacific, where rival China has been seeking diplomatic inroads.

The Foreign Ministry had announced that Lai would travel from Nov.30 to Dec.6 to the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Palau.

The trip comes against the background of Chinese loans, grants and security cooperation treaties with Pacific island nations that have aroused major concern in the US, New Zealand, Australia and others over Beijing’s moves to assert military, political and economic control over the region. Taiwan’s government has yet to confirm whether Lai will make a stop in Hawaii, although such visits are routine and unconfirmed Taiwanese media reports say he will stay for more than one day. Under pressure from China, which claims Taiwan as its own territory and threatens to annex it by force if needed, Taiwan has just 12 formal diplomatic allies. However, it retains strong contacts with dozens of other nations, including the US, its main source of diplomatic and military support.

China has sought to whittle away traditional alliances in the South Pacific, signing a security agreement with the Solomon Islands shortly after it broke ties with Taiwan and winning over Nauru just weeks after Lai’s election in January.

Since then, China has been pouring money into infrastructure projects in its South Pacific allies, as it has around the world, in exchange for political support.

Agencies