As the Russian Army surrounds major Ukrainian cities including the capital Kiev and cities in the west of the country bordering Poland, a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) member-state, the Americans have turned their focus on China and, to a lesser extent, India.

While Beijing is widely reported to be supporting Moscow covertly, New Delhi has maintained a studied neutrality on the conflict. The Ukraine crisis has led American President Joe Biden to lay out Washington’s strategic agenda going forward clearly ~ strengthen Nato and the trans-Atlantic alliance with Europe and impose costs or at least keep the pressure on major global and regional players that follow an independent foreign policy not to go too far in encouraging Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions.

US National Security Adviser (NSA) Jake Sullivan met China’s top diplomat Mr Yang Jiechi in Rome on Monday to tell him as much face to face. The meeting was the first high-level contact between the two countries after the Russian invasion of its neighbour and follows up on President Biden’s virtual meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in November 2021.

The Americans knew that despite the inclusion of “the impact of Russia’s war against Ukraine on regional and global security” in the agenda for the Rome meet, little substantive results were expected to emerge. And that’s how it panned out.

Washington’s frustration at Beijing’s role in the Russia-Ukraine conflict is reflected in a senior Biden Administration official’s comment to Politico: “It’s not about negotiating any specific issues or outcomes… (it’s about) China having aligned itself with Russia to advance their own vision of the world order.” In effect, Mr Sullivan merely conveyed to China that the USA knows what it is up to and warned it of consequences. But that may not bother Beijing.

The Chinese government is expected to continue doing what it has been doing for the past three weeks ~ calling for a “peaceful settlement of the Ukraine crisis” while asserting its opposition to Western sanctions against Russia. Meanwhile, an enraged bipartisan group of US lawmakers introduced a Bill in the US House of Representatives on Monday which aims to block China from helping Russia get around the sanctions.

What seems to have got the US Administration to up the ante on China is a report over the weekend that the Kremlin has asked Beijing for military aid, a claim derided as “fake news” by the Chinese. Russia’s outreach to India ~ offering an increase in its oil and petroleum product exports as well as Indian investments in the Russian oil sector ~ against the backdrop of the West-led ban on Russian oil and gas also has Washington worried.

India is a massive importer of oil, and it would make economic sense for it to take up Moscow’s offer. The Americans are cognisant of this, as they are of deep Indo-Russian defence ties and have therefore increased pressure on New Delhi to at least not enhance oil and gas imports from Russia which are currently worth one billion dollars.