Blinken heads to Asia, with China, Russia tensions soaring
Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Central and South Asia next week for international talks that will put him in the same room as his Chinese and Russian counterparts
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fresh from a meeting with China’s top diplomat and a U.N. Security Council session on Ukraine, Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Central and South Asia next week for international talks that will put him in the same room as his Chinese and Russian counterparts.
The State Department said Blinken would travel to the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan before going to India for a meeting of the Group of 20 foreign ministers from the world’s largest industrialized and developing countries, including China and Russia.
The trip comes as tensions have soared between the U.S. and Russia and between the U.S. and China over Russia's war in Ukraine and Chinese assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific. All three countries are competing fiercely to outdo each other in global influence.
Underscoring the challenges the U.S. faces, the three countries Blinken will visit were all among the 32 nations that abstained in Thursday's U.N. General Assembly vote that condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine by a vote of 141-7.
