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Russia and China Must Counter Any US Attempt at Containment, Shoigu Says

Russian Security Council's Secretary Sergei Shoigu attends a meeting dedicated to the situation in the south of the country following an incursion of Ukrainian troops, at a residence outside Moscow, Russia August 12, 2024. (Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Kremlin via Reuters)
Russian Security Council's Secretary Sergei Shoigu attends a meeting dedicated to the situation in the south of the country following an incursion of Ukrainian troops, at a residence outside Moscow, Russia August 12, 2024. (Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Kremlin via Reuters)
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Russia and China Must Counter Any US Attempt at Containment, Shoigu Says

Russian Security Council's Secretary Sergei Shoigu attends a meeting dedicated to the situation in the south of the country following an incursion of Ukrainian troops, at a residence outside Moscow, Russia August 12, 2024. (Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Kremlin via Reuters)
Russian Security Council's Secretary Sergei Shoigu attends a meeting dedicated to the situation in the south of the country following an incursion of Ukrainian troops, at a residence outside Moscow, Russia August 12, 2024. (Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Kremlin via Reuters)

The key task for Russia and China is to counter any attempt by the United States to contain their countries, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin told China's foreign minister on Tuesday.

US President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to impose steep tariffs on China and other countries, raising fears of a trade war and the United States casts China as its biggest competitor and Russia as its biggest nation-state threat.

China's Xi Jinping and Putin in May pledged a "new era" of partnership between the two most powerful rivals of the United States, which they cast as an aggressive Cold War hegemon sowing chaos across the world.

Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu told Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing that the strong relations between Moscow and Beijing were a stabilizing influence on the world.

"I see the most important task as countering the policy of 'dual containment' of Russia and China pursued by the United States and its satellites," Shoigu was quoted as saying by Russian state news agencies.

Xi and Putin believe the post-Cold War era of extraordinary US dominance is crumbling after the perceived humiliations of the 1991 Soviet collapse and centuries of European colonial dominance of China.

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First White South Africans Fly to US Under Trump Refugee Plan 

White South Africans demonstrate in support of US President Donald Trump in front of the US embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, Feb. 15, 2025. (AP)
White South Africans demonstrate in support of US President Donald Trump in front of the US embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, Feb. 15, 2025. (AP)
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First White South Africans Fly to US Under Trump Refugee Plan 

White South Africans demonstrate in support of US President Donald Trump in front of the US embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, Feb. 15, 2025. (AP)
White South Africans demonstrate in support of US President Donald Trump in front of the US embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, Feb. 15, 2025. (AP)

The first 49 white South Africans deemed victims of racial discrimination and granted refugee status under an offer by US President Donald Trump were flying to the US on Monday in a move deepening friction between the two nations.

The US government has blocked mostly non-white refugee admissions from the rest of the world but is prioritizing Afrikaners, the descendants of mostly Dutch settlers.

Giving refugee status to white South Africans has been met with a mixture of alarm and ridicule by South African authorities, who say the Trump administration has waded into a domestic political issue it does not understand.

It comes at a time of heightened racial tensions in South Africa over land and jobs that has divided the ruling coalition.

The charter plane carrying the 49 from Johannesburg was expected to arrive at Washington Dulles airport on Monday morning.

"The government unequivocally states that these are not refugees," South African foreign ministry spokesperson Chrispin Phiri told local broadcaster Newzroom Afrika.

"But we are not going to stand in their way."

WEALTH INEQUITIES

Since Nelson Mandela brought democracy into South Africa in the 1994, the once-ruling white minority has retained most of the wealth amassed under colonialism and apartheid.

Whites still own three-quarters of private land and have about 20 times the wealth of the Black majority, according to international academic journal the Review of Political Economy.

Less than 10% of white South Africans are out of work, compared with more than a third of their Black counterparts.

Yet the claim that minority white South Africans face discrimination from the Black majority has become an established trope in right-wing online chatrooms, and has been echoed by Trump's white South African-born ally Elon Musk.

Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has cut all US financial assistance to South Africa last month, citing disapproval of its land policy and of its genocide case at the International Court of Justice against Washington's ally, Israel.