Putin and Xi Meet in Moscow, Rock the World—with Trade and Diplomacy, Not Bombs

Above is yesterday’s video chat with VTForeignPolicy editor Johnny Punish; below is my forthcoming American Free Press article posted here for paid subscribers only.

Putin and Xi Meet in Moscow, Rock the World—with Trade and Diplomacy, Not Bombs

By Kevin Barrett, for American Free Press

On the afternoon of March 20, the leaders of the world’s biggest nuclear power and the world’s biggest economic powerhouse met at the Kremlin. Russian president Putin and Chinese President Xi spent three days hammering out a series of economic agreements—and promoting China’s 12-point plan to end the war in Ukraine.

The Western press took a dim view of the meeting. National Public Radio commented:

“This visit was an especially strong sign of support from China for Russia, coming just days after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin for alleged war crimes. Xi gave no indication he brought up the arrest warrant. Instead, the two men greeted each other warmly as ‘dear friend.’”

In reality, Putin’s ICC arrest warrant was a public relations stunt designed to “skunk” the Moscow summit and to drown out the growing European protests against the Ukraine war. Putin was charged with the alleged crime of authorizing Russian Commissioner for Childrens’ Rights Maria Lvova-Belova to move orphaned children out of war zones to safety. The ICC cited an Associated Press article casting Russia’s humanitarian evacuation of orphans from the ethnically-Russian Donbass region, where the Ukrainian army and associated extremist militias have been shelling civilians since 2014, as “kidnapping.”

Western media tried to portray the Putin-Xi meeting as bad for China (because Putin is a globally-despised war criminal) and bad for Russia (because of its growing dependence on the much larger Chinese economy). But as usual, the Western propagandists were lying.