US to use coalition against China

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday that the Biden administration is aiming to lead the international bloc opposed to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine into a broader coalition. The aim is to counter what it sees as a more serious, long-term threat to global order from China.

In a speech outlining the administration’s China policy, Blinken laid out a three-pillar approach to competing with Beijing in a race to define the 21st century’s economic and military balance.

While the U.S. sees Russia and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine as the most acute and immediate threat to international stability, Blinken said the Biden administration believes China poses a greater danger.

“Even as President Putin’s war continues, we will remain focused on the most serious long-term challenge to the international order – and that is the one posed by the People’s Republic of China,” Blinken said.

“China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order — and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it,” he said.

“Beijing’s vision would move us away from the universal values that have sustained so much of the world’s progress over the past 75 years.”

US urges internet providers to keep allowing Russia online

Internet providers around the globe should continue to provide services to Russia to encourage the flow of independent information, U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said during a briefing Wednesday.

“We urge involved players around the world not to disconnect Russia from the Internet, so that information continues to flow into the country, and the Internet remains free and open within Russia itself,” Price said.

Putin: West will fail in effort to isolate Russia

Russian President Vladimir Putin says the West will fail in its attempts to isolate Russia and face growing economic problems.

Speaking Thursday via video link to members of the Eurasian Economic Forum, Putin said Russia wasn’t going to shut itself off from international cooperation.

The forum includes several ex-Soviet nations.

Putin said that trying to isolate Russia is “impossible, utterly unrealistic in the modern world” and “those who try to do it primarily hurt themselves.”

The Russian leader cited growing economic challenges in the West, including “inflation unseen in 40 years, growing unemployment, rupture of supply chains and the worsening of global crises in such sensitive spheres as food.”

“This is not a joke,” he said. “This is a serious thing that will have an impact on the entire system of economic and political relations.”

Latest developments

The Ukrainian governor of the eastern Luhansk region says Russian bombardments killed three people in and around the city of Lysychansk, which is a key focus of fighting.

In the northern Kharkiv region, governor Oleh Synehubov said two men were killed and 10 others injured, including a 9-year-old girl, in shelling of the town of Balakliya.

The Russian military says it has destroyed a large Ukrainian unit with equipment at a railway station in the east.

The U.S. will close the last avenue for Russia to pay its billions in debt to international investors on Wednesday, making Russia’s first default on its debts in more than a century all but inevitable.

The Treasury Department said it does not intend to renew the license for Russia to keep paying its debtholders through American banks.