China has not moved toward providing lethal aid that would help Russia in its invasion of Ukraine and the United States has made clear behind closed doors that such a move would have serious consequences, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan has said.
"Beijing will have to make its own decisions about how it proceeds, whether it provides military assistance - but if it goes down that road it will come at real costs to China," Mr Sullivan told CNN's State of the Union programme.
China has not moved forward in providing that aid, but neither has Beijing taken that option off the table, Mr Sullivan said in a separate interview on ABC's This Week programme.
US officials have warned their Chinese counterparts privately about what those costs might be, Mr Sullivan said, but he would not elaborate on those discussions.
The US and its NATO allies in recent days have been scrambling to dissuade China from such a move, making public comments on their belief that China is considering providing lethal equipment to Russia.
Yesterday US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said China has been providing non-lethal assistance to Russia through its companies.
US President Joe Biden visited Kyiv and met President Volodymyr Zelensky last Monday, promising new American military aid for Ukraine worth $500m.
Friday marked the first anniversary of Russia's invasion. The US has been by far the largest supplier of military assistance to help Ukraine repel better-equipped Russian forces. Ukraine expects a major new Russian offensive soon.
CIA Director William Burns also weighed in regarding China in an interview aired today.
"We're confident that the Chinese leadership is considering the provision of lethal equipment. We also don't see that a final decision has been made yet, and we don't see evidence of actual shipments of lethal equipment," Mr Burns told CBS's Face the Nation programme.
Republican Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, cited reports that drones are among the lethal weapons China has considered sending to Russia.
Mr McCaul said Chinese leader Xi Jinping is preparing to visit Moscow next week for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Mr Putin has alluded to a Xi visit but the timing has not been confirmed by Russia or China.
Russia and China signed a "no limits" partnership in February 2022 shortly before Russian forces invaded Ukraine.
Economic links between Russia and China have deepened while Moscow's connections with the West have shriveled.
Mr Biden said on Friday the US would respond if China were to supply Russia with lethal weapons to use in Ukraine, but added in an interview with ABC News, "I don't anticipate a major initiative on the part of China providing weaponry to Russia".
The West has been wary of China's response to the invasion, with some officials warning that a Russian victory would colour China's actions toward Taiwan. Beijing has never renounced the use of force to bring the self-ruled island that it considers a wayward province under its rule. China has not condemned the conflict in Ukraine or called it an "invasion".
'Unholy alliance'
"The fact that they're going to meet next week, Chairman Xi and Putin, to discuss this unholy alliance that they have, to put weapons into Ukraine, to me is very disturbing because while maybe Ukraine today, it's going to be Taiwan tomorrow," Mr McCaul said. "That's why this is so important."
The west reacted with scepticism to China's proposal on Friday for a Ukraine ceasefire, with NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg saying Beijing did not have much credibility as a mediator because of its failure to condemn the invasion.
Ukraine rejected the proposal unless it involves Russia withdrawing its troops.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has accused NATO members of taking part in the Ukraine conflict by donating arms to the country and said the West planned to break up Russia.
He added that Russia had no choice but to take into account the nuclear capabilities of NATO as the US-led military alliance was seeking the defeat of Russia.
According to TASS, he told Russian state television: "In today's conditions, when all the leading NATO countries have declared their main goal as inflicting a strategic defeat on us, so that our people suffer as they say, how can we ignore their nuclear capabilities in these conditions".
In the interview, Mr Putin also reiterated his calls for a multipolar world and said he had "no doubt" that this would happen.
"What are we against? Against the fact that this new world that is taking shape is being built only in the interests of just one country, the United States."
"Now that their attempts to re-configure the world in their own likeness after the fall of the Soviet Union have led to this situation, we are obliged to react."
The West, Mr Putin said, wanted to liquidate Russia.
"They have one goal: to disband the former Soviet Union and its fundamental part - the Russian Federation. Only then will they maybe accept us in the so-called family of civilised peoples but only separately, every part separately," he said.
The West was an indirect accomplice to the "crimes" committed by Ukraine, Mr Putin claimed.
He said NATO and the West were "sending tens of billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine. This really is participation".
Embassy reopens
Moscow ally Algeria is set to reopen its embassy in Kyiv which has been closed since Russia's invasion of Ukraine more than a year ago, the foreign ministry said.
"This decision comes within the framework of safeguarding the interests of the Algerian state," a ministry statement said, adding that the embassy would reopen soon but without providing details.
A charge d'affaires will run the mission when it reopens, it added.
Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune had announced the planned reopening during a television broadcast on Friday, acknowledging Algeria's long-standing relations with Russia.
Algeria and Russia have solid trade links that saw exchanges between the two countries reach €2.8bn in 2021.
They also have military ties and are members of OPEC+, a group of oil producers led by Russia, as well as the Gas Exporting Countries Forum.
Read more on Russia's invasion of Ukraine
Ukraine's military said that Russia conducted unsuccessful offensives near Yahidne over the past day, after Russia's Wagner mercenary group claimed to have captured the village in eastern Ukraine near the focus on intense fighting.
The General Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces said in a morning update that Russia keeps concentrating its offensive efforts along the entire Bakhmut front line, were Yahidne is located.
The months-long struggle for Bakhmut, where only about 5,000 of 70,000 residents remain, has seen some of the bloodiest attritional fighting of Russia's year-old invasion.
Russian mercenary leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said yesterday his forces had captured Yahidne. On Friday, he had claimed control of Berkhivka, an adjacent village on the outskirts of Bakhmut.
But the Ukrainian bulletin said attacks were continuing, citing "unsuccessful offensives" near six settlements, including Yahidne and Berkhivka, in the Donetsk region, which Moscow claims to have annexed.
Reuters could not verify the battlefield reports of either side.
Ukraine's bulletin added that Russian forces had shelled the areas of 22 settlements along that part of the front line in Donetsk over the past day, while Ukraine had repelled 71 in Donetsk and elsewhere along the frontline.
The fierce battles along the front lines in Ukraine's south and east, especially near Bakhmut, now consist of crawling attempts by each side to move the line, sometimes just a few metres at a time.
Russia has made progress towards encircling Bakhmut but failed to capture it in time to deliver a victory for President Vladimir Putin to announce on Friday's anniversary of his invasion.
