i'm being joined by our correspondents who've been tracking the developments closely from across the world from moscow we have julia chapman from brussels we have rosie butchered and joining us from beijing today is patrick fork good evening to all of you patrick i'll start with you you're in the city where all the action happened today president putin of russia was in beijing today and he attended the opening ceremony of the winter olympics how do we see this visit and everything that came out of it including the joint statement moscow and beijing have been getting closer and closer together they've been cooperating and partnering with one another on a number of things like closet trade technology even military exercises and the kremlin said that president putin was coming here and going to be signing uh possibly 15 deals with china they've also been increasingly coordinated in their pushback against the height west and although china's ambivalent about the idea of russia invading ukraine it has shown sympathy towards moscow over its concerns about nato in a conversation that took place between u.s secretary state of state anthony blinken and china's foreign minister wang yi the chinese foreign minister said to anthony blinken that those concerns had to be taken seriously at the same time though this is an incredibly important event for china and many analysts have said that the last thing china would want is for something like russia invading ukraine overshadowing the winter olympic games julia chapman what is today's meeting between president putin and president xi and the joint statement mean for moscow's campaign here in ukraine well certainly uh the support from beijing is a welcome move for moscow russia uh in its campaign uh to exert pressure on the west uh certainly doesn't have a lot of allies in that part of the world and china and russia have been growing closer together over the past few years of course that comes after russia annexed the ukrainian peninsula of crimea was met with widespread sanctions by western countries and needed somewhere to turn for an economic partner china was the natural answer although china doesn't acknowledge the annexation of crimea uh it doesn't acknowledge that crimea is part of russian territory it has certainly uh stepped up economic and political cooperation with russia in the years since now china is urging a de-escalation of the crisis on ukraine but it also has backed russia when it says that it isn't planning to invade and we've been hearing today from the two leaders meeting in beijing ahead of the opening ceremony of the winter olympics really expressing a deepening of that cooperation they said that they had coordinated their foreign policy approaches they stood for a multi-polar world they were condemning the use of sanctions and trade wars uh they condemned the use of human rights as leverage on other countries so certainly there are many areas where there are where there is overlap between russia's interests and china's interests and while president putin may not be getting overt support for any kind of invasion undoubtedly he will be looking to beijing for a sympathetic year at least on the security guarantees european leaders are making a beeline for moscow first macro and then olaf shoals of germany what are the chances of diplomacy delivering after the kind of threats we saw of sanctions and of course the growing troop deployments from both sides it is difficult to see how these meetings can resolve the ongoing tensions they are now part of several weeks of diplomacy between russia and the west aimed at de-escalating the situation over ukraine of course emanuel macron has held three phone calls with russian president vladimir putin in the past week alone he's now going to come to moscow for a visit to meet in person with president putin he believes that he can have some impact of course france and germany were both involved in the normandy format they helped bring about the minsk agreements which were the way that russia and ukraine agreed to resolve the crisis the ongoing conflict in eastern ukraine between the ukrainian military and russian-backed separatists that agreement has since fallen apart but undoubtedly france and germany do play a role in getting russia back to the table rosie russia and china have closed ranks and they've declared nato and allies as a threat to regional peace how does the west view today's developments in beijing well you can imagine that here in brussels these uh this announcement of this new kind of partnership or a joint strategy is not particularly welcome now it has to be said nato is being tight-lipped on this i asked them for a reaction and they said they had no particular comment but they did point me towards the past statements of the secretary general jen stoltenberg in which he basically reiterated that position we've heard many times before that nato will never bar ukraine from joining the alliance now ukraine is not currently a member of the alliance that means that it doesn't uh it's not party to the to the alliance's collective defense agreements and beyond that here in brussels tensions are really rising on all fronts in the building behind me the european commission it's president ursula underlined we heard from her this morning some suggestions of what these massive sanctions the bloc has been threatening to slap on moscow in the case of an invasion might entail now in a newspaper interview she alluded to export bans and she also mentioned nordstrom 2 so that controversial gas pipeline which if certified would funnel gas from russia into germany so tensions rising on old front and we can imagine as i mentioned not particularly welcome news here in brussels how does nato see turkey's role and the offer of mediation well it is interesting turkey has been sometimes uh its role in nato has been questioned but here it's true that this might have a an interesting role to play going forward it must be said that nato is is intending to try and keep up the diplomacy you know despite this announcement today nato does have the those offers that it's made to russia of having a a series of nato russia councils around the table with all 30 nato allies including turkey that offer still stands and as do its proposals on how to find some common ground so in air tricky areas like arms control and even when it comes to when it comes to joint military exercises so moving forward nato will really be drawing on the expertise of all its allies and will be trying to invite russia to sit down at the table and find a diplomatic solution a way forward in a way to de-escalate patrick rosie and julia thanks very much for joining us with those updates [Music] veon is now available in your country download the app now and get all the news on the move
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