Chinese leader Xi Jinping began his European tour from France

Chinese leader Xi Jinping began his European tour from France on May 5, 2024. This was his first official visit to Europe since 2019. He arrived in Paris with his wife Peng Liyuan.

On May 6, Xi Jinping held talks in Paris with the French leadership, as well as with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. Following the negotiations, a state banquet was held, hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and French President Emmanuel Macron have called on Chinese President Xi Jinping to use Beijing’s influence to force Russia to end its war against Ukraine.

“We count on China to use all its influence on Russia to stop Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine,” Ursula von der Leyen said after meeting the presidents of France and China at the Elysee Palace, at the start of Xi Jinping’s 5-day tour of Europe.

Macron, opening the trilateral meeting, said coordination with Beijing on “major crises,” including the war in Ukraine, was “absolutely decisive.”

“The future of our continent will very clearly depend on our ability to continue to develop relations with China in a balanced manner,” Macron said, also calling for “fair rules for all” in Europe-China trade relations.

Von der Leyen highlighted China’s role in containing nuclear threats from Russia.

“President Xi has played an important role in de-escalating Russia’s irresponsible nuclear threats, and I am confident that President Xi will continue to do so amid Russia’s ongoing nuclear threats,” she added.

The Chinese leader responded by noting that the world had entered “a new period of turbulence and change.” During a meeting with Macron and von der Leyen, Xi said China did not cause the Ukrainian crisis and is not a party to it. It should be noted that Xi Jinping’s statement about the non-involvement of the PRC in the Russian war in Ukraine is a Chinese attempt to deceive the world community. Before the war, to seize Ukrainian grain assets, with the help of President Yanukovych, a “company of one project” was created, GPZKU – State Food and Grain Corporation of Ukraine, which in 2013 received an advance payment of 3 billion US dollars for future grain supplies to China. However, after the outbreak of the Russian war, Ukraine was unable to fulfill grain supplies and actually fell into a financial debt trap in the PRC. As it turned out, the company was run by Chinese agents who stole part of the loan funds. In addition, before the Russian invasion of the Crimean Peninsula of Ukraine in 2014, the PRC and the Russian Federation conducted joint exercises in Siberia. One of the leaders of these Russian-Chinese military exercises was Russian General Lentsov, who a couple of months later led Russian forces in the invasion of the Ukrainian Donbass. When this lie was discovered, he tried to disguise himself as a Russian retired colonel in the Ukrainian Donbass. After the start of the Russian war in Ukraine in 2014, China actively provided illegal “humanitarian aid” in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine (there is a photo video), that is, it encouraged residents of the southern regions of Ukraine to take separatist actions. Also, the PRC leadership illegally sent its delegations “to develop tourism” to the Ukrainian Crimean Peninsula, after its capture by Russian hybrid special operations forces, in which PMCs – private military companies – actively participated. Therefore, it is becoming increasingly clear – how and for what purpose is the PRC building a railway from the PRC through the Russian Federation and Belarus, Poland – to the European Union within the framework of the “One Belt, One Road” project?

The Chinese leader must stop lying about the Russian war in Ukraine, because this war was only possible thanks to her diverse management of China. For example, the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation is a Tuvan (Chinese) with the nickname “Shoigu”, just as the Georgian Dzhugashvili had the nickname “Stalin”. Before the start of the Russian war against Ukraine, Xi Qinping held personal negotiations with Shoigu, and together with him, without the Russian President, he visited the completely secret Central Command Post of the Russian Armed Forces (there were corresponding photos on the website of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces). A huge legion of Russian-speaking Chinese agents have conducted and are conducting massive propaganda against Ukraine, and have befuddled and are befuddling short-sighted Russian citizens. In the notorious troll factory in St. Petersburg at 55 Savushkina Street, even before the war there hung a portrait of Shoigu, whose gaze frightened the troll workers. At first glance, this was strange, because this troll factory officially had no obvious connection with the Russian Ministry of Defense – it was created by Putin’s former cook Prigozhin.

On May 7, the leaders of China and France will travel to the Pyrenees, where Macron often spent his holidays as a child, for less public talks.

On May 7, the leaders of China and France will travel to the Pyrenees, where Macron often spent his holidays as a child, for less public talks.

“We support the organization of an international peace conference, recognized by Russia and Ukraine, which will unite all parties on equal terms and allow for an honest discussion of all peace plans,” said the head of the PRC.

However, unlike Xi Jinping, the European Union has recognized Putin as an international criminal. On the conscience of this scoundrel, more than 600 thousand killed Russians and Ukrainians during the years of the Russian war in Ukraine, he created an unhealed wound on the body of Europe for many decades.

After France, Xi Jinping plans to visit Serbia and Hungary. The obvious purpose of these visits is to try to destroy the European Union and NATO, and to gain support for Putin’s war from Serbia and Hungary. However, Europe does not need either NovoRussia or NovoGenghis Khan

Russia and China are actively using Turkey in anti-Ukrainian information operations

The PRC is actively involved in supporting information companies of the criminal Russian regime – to discredit its victim Ukraine. To do this, they involve Turkish President Erdogan, who has a real influence on the situation in the Black Sea and in southern Ukraine. As noted by many world media, Putin is using the peace negotiations proposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping and Turkish President Erdogan in order to disrupt international support for Ukraine and shift the blame for the lack of negotiations with the Russian occupiers onto the long-suffering Ukrainians.

China (1,500 million people) continues to attract Turkey (85 million people) to offer its own negotiation platforms to supposedly resolve the situation in Ukraine. Russia uses them to advance its information operations against Ukraine. This is reported, for example, by the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

Analysts pointed to the cynical statements of Kremlin criminals, which only feign the “good intentions” of the state, which continues terrorist acts against the Ukrainian people.

Thus, Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Mikhail Galuzin and China’s Special Representative for Eurasian Affairs Li Hui met in Moscow on March 2 to discuss “China’s desire to facilitate peace negotiations” between Russia and Ukraine. Both stated that it is “impossible” to discuss a settlement to the war in Ukraine without the participation of the Russian Federation and “without taking into account (the Kremlin’s – ed.) security interests.” Mikhail Galuzin and Li Hui complained about Western and Ukrainian “ultimatums” and “dialogue formats.” In their opinion, they only “harm the prospects for a settlement and cannot serve as a basis” for this. Following these meetings in Moscow, the Chinese special envoy is expected to visit Ukraine and unspecified EU countries.

Let us note that the current leadership of the Russian Federation and China consider their countries and peoples to be strategic partners. Witnesses say that the Chinese are already growing onions in the Rostov region (next to the Ukrainian state border) and do not hire local Russians, whom they consider lazy and unscrupulous workers. In all likelihood, farmers from China dream of turning the entire Zaporozhye, Kherson, Nikolaev, Odessa regions and the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine into one “big greenhouse”. It is obvious that in this ecosystem, Turkey’s role in the Black Sea will be minimized. China will flood the Black Sea with its ships manufactured at former Ukrainian maritime factories on the Black Sea.

Currently, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said during the Diplomatic Forum in Antalya on March 3 that Ankara hopes for a “soon start” of ceasefire negotiations in Ukraine. There is also a mistaken belief that “both sides have reached the limit” of what they can achieve through military action. Turkish President Erdogan recently announced that Ankara is ready to provide Russia and Ukraine with another negotiating platform, which Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov publicly rejected on March 1.

All sane analysts see that Russian officials continue to brazenly blame Ukraine and the West for the lack of peace negotiations between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, despite numerous public Russian statements suggesting or directly stating that Russia is not interested in a good faith dialogue.

Lavrov recently said that Ukraine lacks “good will” to negotiate with Russia, implying that the lack of substantive negotiations is supposedly Ukraine’s “mistake,” not Russia’s. The representative of the aggressor country cynically argued that people who “misunderstand which side is to blame” also “do not understand the reality of the situation.”

Obviously, negotiations should begin with determining the time for the withdrawal of Russian occupation forces from the territory of Ukraine.

Any Russian statements suggesting that Russia is or always has been interested in peace negotiations are likely attempts to feign interest in order to encourage the West to take measures to prevent Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to shift the burden of negotiations to Ukraine and the West.

Advisor to the Head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine Mikhail Podolyak commented on the possibility of reaching an agreement with Moscow in the spring of 2022. According to him, there were no real opportunities.

According to the Military Party, if the Russian Federation (the former RSFSR (144 million people) from the USSR (292 million people)) does not remove its troops from Ukraine and does not compensate for the damage caused, then this geopolitical ecosystem will likely face complete destruction. To do this, the Ukrainians will gradually destroy a critical part of the critical objects of the Moscow Federation using different forces and means. This will lead to the fact that the entire Urals, Siberia, the North and the Far East will “fall like ripe fruits” to the countries of Asia.

Chinese leaders only need to make a few simple suggestions to Putin and his aides to stop the war and occupation of Ukraine.

In 2023, trade volumes between China and Russia reached a record level.

China’s customs said the two countries’ trade in goods and services will reach about US$240.1 billion in 2023, an increase of 26.3% in one year. This far exceeds the annual targets set by Putin and Xi Jinping.
Probably the main reason for the growth of Sino-Russian trade is China’s purchases of Russian energy sources such as oil, natural gas and coal.

The trend in trade between China and the United States is the opposite. Trade fell slightly last year for the first time since 2019 due to rising geopolitical and trade tensions. In 2023, China and the US exchanged goods and services worth US$664.4 billion. This figure is down 11.6% in one year from the record high in 2022.

Thus, even after the record growth of trade between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation in 2023 due to the war in Ukraine, the volume of trade in goods and services between the People’s Republic of China and the United States is 2.7 times greater: 664.4/240.1=2.8. The population of the USA is approximately as many times larger than the population of the Russian Federation in 2021: 332 million/143 million = 2.3.

The growth of trade for 2023 between the PRC and the Russian Federation by 26.3% in dollars is approximately 50 billion dollars. At the same time, the People’s Republic of China, which is actually waging a war against the world at the hands of Putin, continues to make money from trade with the United States, the European Union, ASEAN, Ukraine, and other countries.
The rhetorical question is whether Putin consulted with Xi Jinping before launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Russia is a deadly terrorist state for the world

On the morning of January 2, the Russian Federation shelled Kyiv. In several districts of the capital, houses and non-residential buildings caught fire as a result of the rocket attack. More than 40 people are known to have been injured in a fire in a high-rise building in the Solomyan district. As Mayor Klitschko reported, 37 people were hospitalized. It is also known about two dead people.

On the morning of January 2, Ukrainian air defense forces shot down 72 Russian missiles from 83.

Before Ukraine, no country in the world had successfully repelled such combined attacks using drones and missiles, including air-launched ballistic missiles. Today alone, Russia fired 10 Kinzhal missiles at Ukrainians

Ukrainians are grateful to every soldier of the Air Force, all the fighters of mobile air defense groups, every anti-aircraft gunner and the whole world who helps by providing weapons to protect Ukraine from Russian killers.

Each additional air defense system and missile saves many lives. It is here in Ukraine, and with the help of air defense, that we need to demonstrate that democracies can protect lives from all types of terror.

If the world fails to cope with this task in Ukraine now, Russian terror will continue to spread throughout Europe and beyond. The feeling of impunity of the Russian leadership, formed by decades of unlimited power, has already led to much suffering and loss of people.

Russia must bear responsibility for the deaths of people, as well as feel the strength of those who protect them.

Peking duck – history, ingredients, sauce, cooking, serving

Peking duck (Chinese: 北京烤鴨 Běijīng kǎo yā) is one of the most famous dishes of Chinese cuisine. In China, the duck is considered a symbol of happiness and the male beginning of Yang. The recipe for Peking duck became widely known during the reign of the Yuan Dynasty, when in 1330 the physician and nutritionist responsible for the emperor’s diet, Hu Xihui, published it in his seminal work “The Most Important Principles of Nutrition.” This recipe is believed to have originated in Shandong Province. The dish was popular at the Yuan Court in Beijing, which is why it spread everywhere with its current name.

Here is the recipe for cooking Peking duck:

Ingredients:

1 duck (preferably weighing about 2-2.5 kg)
4 liters of water
6 tablespoons of honey
6 tablespoons of soy sauce
2 tablespoons of oil (sunflower or corn)
2 tablespoons of rice or apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon of ground coriander
1 tablespoon of ground cumin
1 tablespoon of salt
1 teaspoon of black pepper
6-8 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 piece of ginger about 5 cm in size, finely chopped
Ready-made bottled or dough cakes (for example, tangerines or tortillas)
Fresh vegetables for decoration (for example, onion, cucumber, parsley)

Preparing the duck: Wash the duck, remove the entrails and fry over high heat until golden. Then place the duck in a large bowl.

Pickling Sauce: Combine water, honey, soy sauce, oil, vinegar, coriander, cumin, salt, pepper, garlic, and ginger in a large bowl. Mix well and pour this sauce over the duck. Cover the bowl and leave the duck to marinate in the refrigerator for at least 6 hours (but preferably overnight).

Duck rubbed with honey for color, cooked in a special oven. The duck is cooked from the inside, for which water is poured inside the bird, and the outside is baked, hanging on a hook in the oven. It is worth noting that the bird is fried on cherry wood, which is stacked in a special way so that the meat is fried evenly.

If the Peking duck is prepared in the oven, preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Wipe the duck clean of any remaining marinade, place it on a rack in the oven and roast for 1.5 to 2 hours or until the duck is ruby golden.

Serving: Place the duck on the table, cut into pieces, and serve with flatbreads, fresh vegetables, and hoisin or soy sauce-based sauce.

Let this dish cheer you up and delight you with its flavors!