Russia and China this week engaged in the largest military drills in some 30 years after they launched joint naval and air exercises spanning both hemispheres on Tuesday, a report by Reuters confirmed.
The Russian defense ministry said the week-long war games will include 90,000 troops, 400 warships, submarines and support vessels, along with 120 planes and helicopters spread across the Pacific and Arctic Oceans, and the Mediterranean, Caspian and Baltic Seas.
The exercises, dubbed “Ocean 24,” coincided with meetings in Brussels between the U.S. and the European Union in which the issue of security in the Indo-Pacific, as well as China’s support for Russia amid the war in Ukraine, were addressed.
Read Also: Police kill remaining assassins of Rivers CDC chairman
The U.S. accused Beijing of crossing a line and providing “very substantial” support to Russia after more than two and half years of war and sanctions that are said to have begun taking a toll on its military stockpiles.
“These are not dual-use capabilities,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell told reporters, according to Politico EU, in reference to the latest material supplies China provided Russia. “These are basically being applied directly to the Russian war machine.”
A statement by the State Department following the U.S.-EU meeting accused China of helping Russia to evade sanctions and called on Beijing to “act in support of international law” – including in its attempts to push through any peace proposals.