Sidelining Trump, China's Xi rolls out carpet for Ukraine war aggressors

Sidelining Trump, China's Xi rolls out carpet for Ukraine war aggressors

By Joe Cash BEIJING (Reuters) -In a show of solidarity with the aggressors in Europe's worst war in 80 years, China's Xi Jinping will convene with his Russian and North Korean counterparts for the first time as Donald Trump and other Western leaders watch on. The gathering of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un in Beijing this week is testament to the Chinese president's influence over authoritarian regimes intent on redefining the Western-led global order while Trump's threats, sanctions and tariff-driven diplomacy strain long-standing U.S. alliances, geopolitical analysts say. The leaders' milestone meeting in the Chinese capital also raises the prospect of a new trilateral axis building on the mutual defence pact signed between Russia and North Korea in June 2024 and a similar alliance between Beijing and Pyongyang, an outcome that could change the military calculus in the Asia-Pacific region. "We must continue to take a clear stand against hegemonism and power politics, and practice true multilateralism," Xi said on Monday, in a thinly veiled swipe at his geopolitical rival on the other side of the Pacific. Following a summit in Tianjin on Monday where Xi and Putin pitched their vision for a new global security and economic order to more than 20 leaders of non-Western countries, their meeting with Kim is the next set piece ahead of a massive military parade on September 3 to mark the end of World War Two. Xi has already held talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his first visit to China in seven years, resetting strained bilateral ties while Trump's tariffs on Indian goods rile New Delhi. Even as U.S. President Donald Trump touts his peacemaking credentials and sets his eyes on a Nobel Peace Prize - claiming to have ended wars, holding a Ukraine peace summit with Putin in Alaska, and pushing for a sit-down with Kim later this year - any new concentration of military power in the East that includes a war aggressor will ring alarm bells for the West. "Trilateral military exercises between Russia, China and North Korea seem nearly inevitable," wrote Youngjun Kim, an analyst at the U.S.-based National Bureau of Asian Research, in March, citing how the conflict in Ukraine has pushed Moscow and Pyongyang closer together. "Until a few years ago, China and Russia were important partners in imposing international sanctions on North Korea for its nuclear and missile tests... (they) are now potential military partners of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea during a crisis on the Korean peninsula," he added, using the diplomatically-isolated countries' official name. Kim is an important stakeholder in the conflict in Ukraine. While China and India have continued purchasing Russian oil, the North Korean leader has supplied over 15,000 troops to support Putin on Europe's doorstep. In 2024, he also hosted the Russian leader in Pyongyang - the first summit of its kind in 24 years - in a move widely interpreted as a snub to Xi and an attempt to ease his pariah status by reducing North Korea's dependence on China. About 600 soldiers have died fighting for Russia in the Kursk region, according to South Korea's intelligence agency, which believes Pyongyang is planning another such deployment. Putin also told the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit that a "fair balance in the security sphere" must also be restored, a shorthand for Russian demands about NATO and European Security. His visit to Beijing and expected meeting with Xi and Kim may offer clues to Putin's intentions, with Iran's president also due to attend Wednesday's parade, in a show of defiance that Western analysts have dubbed the "Axis of Upheaval." (Reporting by Joe Cash; Editing by Ryan Woo and Lincoln Feast.)

byKonstantin Pynzar

in

September 01, 2025

Sidelining Trump, China's Xi rolls out carpet for Ukraine war aggressors

Sidelining Trump, China's Xi rolls out carpet for Ukraine war aggressors By Joe Cash BEIJING (Reuters) -In a show of solidarity with th...

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China's military parade is a show of strength from a country devastated in World War II

China's military parade is a show of strength from a country devastated in World War II

SHENYANG, China (AP) — Yang Huafeng, a 92-year-old Chinese army veteran, remembers the troops on horseback and the handful of planes that marked the founding of communist China in 1949. It was a far cry from the military might the country will display Wednesday in a parade marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. A Japanese invasion before and during the conflict devastated China and left millions of people dead. "Now you see our country's planes ... , no one dares to mess with them," the veteran told journalists at a war museum in the city of Shenyang. His chest covered with ribbons and medals, Yang expressed pride in his country's rise. The ruling Communist Party is trying to amplify that feeling by playing up the war anniversary with spruced-up museums, new war movies and the military parade,attended by leadersincluding Russia's Vladimir Putin and North Korea's Kim Jong Un. Beijing is playing to domestic and outside audiences To the outside world, the missiles, tanks and fighter jets at the parade will be a show of strength as China seeks to portray itself as an alternative to the American-dominated postwar era. Domestically, the commemoration is an effort to show how far the country has come — and in so doing, build support for the party and its leader, President Xi Jinping. China was a major front in World War II, a fact often overlooked in accounts that focus more on the fight for Europe and U.S. naval battles in the Pacific. "It's a really important part of the Communist Party's legitimizing narrative as the leader of the Chinese people," said Emily Matson, a scholar of modern Chinese history who teaches at Georgetown and George Washington universities. China's rise has reshaped how it views the war The party didn't always make such a big deal about the end of the war. The Communists only came to power four years later, and the bulk of the fighting was done by their rivals, the Nationalist government they overthrew in 1949. The wartime struggle was less pertinent in the first decades of communist rule, when the focus was on building a socialist state. That began to change in 1978, when the party launched the reforms that propelled China's economic rise. Its message gradually shifted from the triumph of the working class to nation-building. "This is a new nationalism in that it begins to include not just the Chinese proletariat but the whole Chinese nation," Matson said. Over time, the defeat of Japan became part of the nation-building story, a starting point marking the end of a long period when foreign powers imposed their will on a weaker China. Wartime history has risen in importance under Xi Xi, who came to power in 2012, has stepped up a drive to build a strong country that can no longer be bullied. His government pushed back againstnew U.S. tariffsthis year, forcingPresident Donald Trumpto scale them down. In 2014, the government designated Sept. 3 — the day after Japan formally surrendered — as Victory Day. The following year, the 70th anniversary of the war's end, it stageda military paradeon the day for the first time. Party historians define Japan's defeat as a turning point. It laid an important foundation for the rebuilding of the nation, said Wang Junwei, the chair of the Academic and Editorial Council at the Institute of Party History and Literature. "The victory in the anti-Japanese war transformed the Chinese nation from deep crisis toward great rejuvenation," he said. A war museum visitor thinks of Gaza For China, the fighting in what it calls the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression began long before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. An extensive exhibition on the war opened in July at a museum on the outskirts of Beijing near the centuries-old Marco Polo Bridge, where skirmishes in 1937 would grow into Japan's invasion of China. The party has, since 2017, said the war started even earlier — in 1931, when Japan occupied an area then known as Manchuria. The northeast region is home to the war museum in Shenyang, which reopened last month after an exterior face-lift. Visitors to both museums peered at artifacts of military life and grainy black and white photos of the suffering and the atrocities. "We paid a very painful price," middle school teacher Yan Hongjia said at the museum. She drew a parallel to the ongoing war in the Mideast. "Let's think about it, if the children in Gaza during the war were our children, would we be willing to relive this history, this humiliation and this pain?" Yan said. As Trump shakes up postwar order, China claims it Harvard historian Rana Mitter, who has written extensively on China's war experience, noticed some changes in the party's presentation of the war when he visited the same exhibition. One was the playing up of the role of Soviet military pilots who helped China in the early years of the fighting, a nod to China's deepening relationship with Russia. Putin is holding talks with Xi on Tuesday. Another was the increased prominence given to China's role as a founding member of the United Nations. China is positioning itself as a defender of the global order as Trump rips up established norms on international relations or bends them to his liking. "World War II is being used as the framing to argue that China is now the real inheritor of that 1945 global order," Mitter said. Sands of time shift Asian alliances In the 1940s, the U.S., China and other allies confronted and drove back Japan's military-led expansion into Asia. Eight decades later, the U.S. and Japan are allies confronting a China that has grown more powerful and assertive of what it sees as its rights. For some neighbors, notably Taiwan and the Philippines, China has become the bully in the South China Sea. Shin Kawashima, a China expert at the University of Tokyo, says that Beijing is using the parade to create an image of standing with Russia and others to counter America and other wealthy nations. "China is trying to say that it was a key member leading the establishment of the postwar global order," he said, "and that it has now reached a stage where it is catching up with and overtaking the United States." ___ Associated Press video producer Wayne Zhang in Beijing and writer Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed.

byKonstantin Pynzar

in

September 01, 2025

China's military parade is a show of strength from a country devastated in World War II

China's military parade is a show of strength from a country devastated in World War II SHENYANG, China (AP) — Yang Huafeng, a 92-year-o...

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Israel considers West Bank annexation as Palestinian statehood recognition gains momentum

Israel considers West Bank annexation as Palestinian statehood recognition gains momentum

Israelis weighing the annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank, three Israeli officials said, just as several Western nations move towards recognizingPalestinianstatehood this month. It's one of the steps Israel is considering in retaliation for the anticipated recognition of Palestinian statehood by France, Australia, Canada, Portugal and the United Kingdom, which would join more than 140 nations that already recognize a Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held an initial discussion on the matter last week, but the security cabinet has yet to discuss the matter in detail and no decision has been made yet, the officials told CNN on condition of anonymity. Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 war and began establishing Jewish settlements there soon after in defiance of international law. The Palestinians want the West Bank, East Jerusalem and theGaza Stripfor a future state, a position supported by most of the international community. The Israeli officials said Netanyahu is considering various scales and levels of annexation options, ranging from a limited takeover of several Jewish settlements to a broader approach calling for annexation of Area C, which comprises 60% of the territory. A series of peace agreements between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1990s known as the Oslo Accords split the West Bank into Areas A, B, and C, where Area C falls entirely under Israeli administrative and security control. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar updated US Secretary of State Marco Rubio about Israel's annexation plans during a meeting last week, according to an Israeli official. However, other Israeli sources told CNN the plans have not received a green light from the US yet. When asked about Israel's annexation plans, a US State Department spokesperson told CNN on Monday that the agency does not divulge the details of interagency or diplomatic discussions. Two of the officials said one of the main options being considered is annexation of the Jordan Valley – a strip of land on the eastern edge of the West Bank that runs along the Jordan River. The officials said there was a broader Israeli public consensus in favor of such a proposal, adding that Israel's need to use it as a security perimeter would be easier to sell to the international community – and, most importantly, Washington. However, Netanyahu's far-right political allies, ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, as well as the settler leadership, oppose the idea of partial annexation involving specific strips or settlement blocks, and are instead pushing for the maximalist approach – applying Israeli sovereignty over all territory not inhabited by Palestinians. The move would allow Israel to encircle Palestinian population centers, further undermining the viability of a contiguous Palestinian state. Whereas applying sovereignty to territory with Palestinian inhabitants could obligate Israel to provide citizenship or residency status to the roughly 3 million Palestinians who live in the West Bank. Annexing any part of the occupied West Bank by applying Israeli sovereignty would violate multiple UN Security Council resolutions and spark an enormous diplomatic backlash. Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal under international law. The United Nations reinforced that designation in 2016 with Security Council resolution 2334, which declared that Jewish settlements in occupied territory are a "flagrant violation" of international law and have "no legal validity." Omer Rahamim, CEO of the Yesha Council, the umbrella organization of West Bank Jewish settlements, told CNN that applying sovereignty should be "a preemptive move ahead of the French recognition of Palestinian statehood. By applying sovereignty, we will prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, because it is impossible to establish a state on the sovereign territory of another country." Rahamim said the settler leadership is demanding broad annexation moves, not just within the settlement blocs or the Jordan Valley "because the meaning of applying sovereignty only to several or specific settlement blocs is that the rest of the area would become a terror state – another Gaza in the heart of the country. And we vehemently oppose that." According to one Israeli official, given the expected political and international pressure, Netanyahu is considering a phased and gradual annexation plan, which would start with a selected territory on a pathway toward broader sovereignty. The official said a phased plan would enable Israel to walk back from a full annexation in exchange for normalization with Saudi Arabia. The last time Israel seriously contemplated West Bank annexation in 2020, Netanyahu eventually dropped the plans as part of the Abraham Accords that saw Israel normalize relations with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco. Saudi Arabia has said that no normalization would take place until Israel commits to a pathway to Palestinian statehood. Alongside annexation, Israel is contemplating other punitive measures in response to the Palestinian statehood developments, including sanctioning the Palestinian Authority, which governs parts of the West Bank as part of a peace agreement with Israel, or evacuating the Palestinian village of Khan Al-Ahmar. On Friday, the US announced it had decided to deny visas to Palestinian Authority officials arriving at this month's UN General Assembly, where French President Emmanuel Macron plans to announce France's recognition of Palestinian statehood, becoming the first permanent UN Security Council member to do so. An Israeli official said the US decision to deny visas was coordinated with the Israeli government as part of an attempt to prevent Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas from attending. The US has continued near unwavering support for Israel under President Donald Trump, even as some of Washington's closest allies voice growing alarm over Netanyahu's government and the conduct of the war. Nonetheless Trump has said Israel is losing "the world of public relations." "They're gonna have to get that war over with. But it is hurting Israel," he said in aninterview with the Daily Callerthat was conducted in the Oval Office on Friday. "There's no question about it. They may be winning the war, but they're not winning the world of public relations, you know, and it is hurting them," he added. For more CNN news and newsletters create an account atCNN.com

byKonstantin Pynzar

in

September 01, 2025

Israel considers West Bank annexation as Palestinian statehood recognition gains momentum

Israel considers West Bank annexation as Palestinian statehood recognition gains momentum Israelis weighing the annexation of parts of the o...

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Who Is the Man Behind the Camera in 'With Love, Meghan'?

Who Is the Man Behind the Camera in 'With Love, Meghan'?

Throughout seasons one and two ofWith Love, Meghan, an off-screen, male voice occasionally chimes in to ask Meghan Markle questions. Who is that guy, viewers may be wondering. The answer: director Michael Steed. Steed, who previously worked onAnthony Bourdain: Parts UnknownandThe Mind of a Chef, among other series, often asks Meghan about what she's doing, or reacts to something she says to the crew. In a few episodes, he even appears in front of the camera to taste a dish. "Everyone has this one version of her, but she's just someone who is hustling and working and doing," Steed toldPeopleof Meghan. "I genuinely wanted to create an environment where she could relax, and I know the pressures of what she deals with on a daily basis. I was happy that we created scenes where she could tap into that part of her life." In one scene at the start of season one, episode six, Meghan makes herself avocado toast then Steed a breakfast sandwich. "The only thing better than eating food is making food for someone and watching them eat it with delight," she says as she watches him dig in. In season two, Steed again appears to taste test food, and during the crew party in the finale. According to his LinkedIn, Steed graduated from Georgia State University with a bachelor's degree in film/cinema/video studies in 1996. His first major project wasAnthony Bourdain: No Reservations, which he served as a producer on, and he producedAnthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. In addition, he directed and executive producedThe Mind of a ChefandMy Guest Guest Needs No Introduction with David Letterman. Both seasons of With Love, Meghan are now streaming on Netflix.Watch now You Might Also Like 12 Weekend Getaway Spas For Every Type of Occasion 13 Beauty Tools to Up Your At-Home Facial Game

byKonstantin Pynzar

in

September 01, 2025

Who Is the Man Behind the Camera in 'With Love, Meghan'?

Who Is the Man Behind the Camera in 'With Love, Meghan'? Throughout seasons one and two ofWith Love, Meghan, an off-screen, male voi...

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Sarah Michelle Gellar Celebrates 23rd Anniversary with Freddie Prinze Jr. in Touching Wedding Throwback Post

Sarah Michelle Gellar Celebrates 23rd Anniversary with Freddie Prinze Jr. in Touching Wedding Throwback Post

Kevin Mazur/WireImage; Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic Sarah Michelle Gellar celebrated 23 years of marriage with husband Freddie Prinze Jr. on Monday, Sept. 1, by posting a throwback wedding photo alongside a playful caption on Instagram TheI Know What You Did Last Summercostars wed in Mexico, in 2002 The couple share daughter Charlotte and son Rocky Sarah Michelle GellarandFreddie Prinze Jr.are celebrating 23 years of marriage, but who's counting? It turns out, theBuffy the Vampire Slayerstar is! The actress, 48, posted a playful tribute to her husband, 49, in honor of their 23rd wedding anniversary on Monday, Sept. 1. In a joint post onInstagram, she wrote, "23 years, 276 months, 1,196 weeks, 8,395 days, 201,480 hours, 12,088,800 minutes and 725,328,000 seconds give or take…. But who's counting ?!?" Gellar shared a throwback photo from the couple's 2002 wedding, which took place at the El Careyes resort in Mexico. In the photo, Prinze holds Gellar's hand as he helps her up a few of the venue's steps. The couple also matched in white for their big day. Initially, neither of theScooby-Doocostars "were into marriage," nor believed in it. However, their perspectives changed once their relationship became more serious. "One day, I just knew we were gonna get married and I knew I was gonna propose," Prinze toldPEOPLE Nowin 2020. "I didn't know when or how. And so I did and fortunately, she was on the same page. My instincts were correct." Gellar added, "I think for the first time it felt different right? Maybe it was the right time for both of us in our lives." Jerod Harris/Getty In 2000, theI Know What You Did Last Summercostars accidentally went on a first date after another friend canceled on dinner plans at the last minute, and the pair had instant chemistry. Less than two years after their friendship turned romantic, the couple got engaged in April 2001. Now, the couple sharestwo children: daughter Charlotte, born in 2010, and son Rocky, born in 2012. Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE's free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. Claire Greenway/Getty I Gellar credits her long-lasting marriage to them being mindful and present with each other. "Take the 10 minutes — put the phone down. Have a cup of coffee together. Walk the dog at the end of the night. Read a story with your kids,"she told PEOPLE in 2020. "Make the most of the time that you have. We are all pulled in so many directions, so make sure that, whichever one you are focusing on, you're present." Read the original article onPeople

byKonstantin Pynzar

in

September 01, 2025

Sarah Michelle Gellar Celebrates 23rd Anniversary with Freddie Prinze Jr. in Touching Wedding Throwback Post

Sarah Michelle Gellar Celebrates 23rd Anniversary with Freddie Prinze Jr. in Touching Wedding Throwback Post Kevin Mazur/WireImage; Axelle/B...

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