Blinken heads to Asia with China, Russia tensions soaring
WASHINGTON — Fresh from a meeting with China’s top diplomat and a U.N. Security Council session on Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Central and South Asia next week for international talks that will put him in the same room as his Chinese and Russian counterparts.
The State Department said Mr. Blinken would travel to the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan before going to India for a meeting of the Group of 20 foreign ministers from the world’s largest industrialized and developing countries, including China and Russia.
The trip comes as tensions have soared between the U.S. and Russia and between the U.S. and China over Russia’s war in Ukraine and Chinese assertiveness in the IndoPacific. All three countries are competing fiercely to outdo each other in global influence.
Underscoring the challenges the U.S. faces, the three countries Mr. Blinken will visit were all among the 32 nations that abstained in Thursday’s U.N. General Assembly vote that condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by a vote of 141-7.
“It’s clear to us that the countries of Central Asia and India have had long, complex relations with Russia,” said Donald Lu, the top U.S. diplomat for the region, on Friday. “I don’t think they’re going to end those relations anytime soon, but we are talking to them about the role they can play in this conflict.”
Mr. Lu added: “We may not share the same approach every day on Ukraine, but I think we do share the goal that this conflict ends and it ends based on principles in the U.N. charter.”
U.S. officials have been tightlipped about the prospects for Mr. Blinken sitting down with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang or Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in New Delhi.
The last time the G-20 foreign ministers met — in Bali, Indonesia, in 2022 — Mr. Blinken held extensive talks with China’s then-foreign minister, Wang Yi, that led to a summit between President Joe Biden and Chinese leader Xi Xinping in November.