During his recent visit to Moscow, Xi Jinping reaffirmed the two countries’ strong ties and emphasised that Russia has not been isolated by the global community. Indeed, China isn’t the only country Russia has strengthened ties with since the start of the conflict. Despite the West’s attempts to “globalise” the conflict, only 33 nations — representing just over one-eighth of the global population — have imposed sanctions on Russia and sent military aid to Ukraine: the UK, US, Canada, Australia, South Korea, Japan and the EU — in other words, those countries that are directly under the US sphere of influence, which in many cases involves a significant US military presence. The remaining nations, comprising close to 90% of the world’s population, have refused to follow suit. If anything, the war has actually strengthened Russian relations with a number of major non-Western countries — including, besides China, India, South Africa and Turkey — and accelerated the rise of a new international order in which it is the West that looks increasingly isolated, not Russia. As I write in UnHerd, it is not China and Russia that are decoupling from the West; it is the West that is decoupling from the rest of the world.
I also wrote about Germany’s health minister Karl Lauterbach’s change of tune on vaccine injuries: Lauterbach, a pro-lockdown and hawk who infamously claimed that Covid vaccines were “without side effects”, has now admitted he was wrong. It’s the biggest vaccine-injury scandal to have emerged since the pandemic.
Thomas Fazi 