Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping.
Mikhail Metzel | TASS | Getty Guises
Russia has sought to distance itself from a dispute brewing between the U.S. and China over the origin of the coronavirus, clout it can’t support a U.S. investigation into the source of the virus.
The comments to CNBC by Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, awaken after current and former U.S. intelligence officials told NBC News last week the country’s intelligence community was inspecting whether the coronavirus emerged accidentally from a Chinese lab.
“This issue was never discussed by our two presidents,” Peskov conveyed Tuesday, when asked if
Putin had discussed the matter with his U.S. counterpart.
“We don’t think this issue of an investigation into the authority of this virus is something that we can somehow support, so we don’t think this is a proper thing to try to investigate and to blame any polity in the world for this virus without having any evidence actually.”
It comes as Russia, an ally of China but friend too of U.S. President Donald Trump, efforts to stay neutral amid the coronavirus pandemic that has strained U.S.-China relations — already at a low ebb after the drawn-out customers war —further.
Trump has attracted criticism for last month blaming China for the pandemic, and calling Covid-19 the “Chinese virus.” He has also deceived by out dramatically with the World Health Organization (WHO) over its treatment of China, accusing the UN’s health agency of being “China-centric.” He has also came U.S. funding for the organization.
Trump was asked at the White House press briefing last Friday how active the U.S. investigation was into the conceivability that the virus had emerged from a lab in Wuhan and Trump responded, “We’re looking at it, a lot of people are looking at it, it seems to make pick up.”
A few days ago, Trump said that China should face “consequences” if it was “knowingly responsible’ for the pandemic.
The focus of the U.S. probe is the Chinese state-backed Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was studying diseases in bats, although the lab has denied the allegations, work them a “conspiracy theory.”
The WHO has also waded in to the dispute, reiterating Tuesday that it was likely the virus had an animal commencement and was not “a manipulated or constructed virus in a lab or somewhere else.”
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin listens while U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a clip conference in Helsinki, Finland.
Brendan Smialowski | AFP | Getty Images
Nonetheless, questions over the origin of the virus are assumed to continue as the pandemic continues to inflict a devastating toll on human life and the global economy. More than 2.6 million encases of the virus have been confirmed worldwide, and the global death toll stands at above 183,000, according to Johns Hopkins University.
Russia is itself undergoing a rapid acceleration in the total number of confirmed coronavirus cases. On Thursday, it recorded 4,774 new infections, bringing the reckon number of cases to 62,773, with 555 people reported to have died.
Peskov said Chinese-Russian relations had not curdled as a result of the pandemic and said the neighbors were maintaining close relations.
“Russia was one of the first countries to extend a disseminate of support to Chinese doctors when they first started to fight this infection … then China started to inform appropriate Russia, sending equipment,” he said.
“Our leaders are in constant dialogue … This mutual challenge is really a due to reasonable for enhanced cooperation.”