Appointment To Meet President Xi Jinping At The Beijing Winter Olympics, President Putin: We Reject The Politicization Of Sports

President Vladimir Putin's virtual meeting with President Xi Jinping. (Source: Kremlin)

JAKARTA - Russia and China must stand firm in rejecting Western interference and defending each other's security interests, Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping agreed in a video call on Wednesday.

Their conversation, eight days after President Putin spoke with US President Joe Biden in a similar format, underscores how shared hostility towards the West brings Moscow and Beijing closer.

One of the talks between the two leaders was related to the implementation of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. In the midst of a diplomatic boycott by a number of state leaders, President Putin accepted the invitation to attend the winter games with open arms.

He said he hoped to meet President Xi at the Winter Olympics in Beijing in February 2022, a sporting event that the White House last week said US government officials would boycott because of China's human rights "cruelty" against Muslim minorities in the western region of Xinjiang.

"I would like to note that we have always supported each other on issues of international sports cooperation, including the rejection of any attempts to politicize sport and the Olympic movement," President Putin said.

As previously reported, after the United States declared a political boycott of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, Australia, Britain, and Canada also declared a boycott.

In response, China has strongly criticized these countries' moves, saying they will pay the price for the erroneous action of a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Olympics.

"The United States, Britain, and Australia have used the Olympic platform for political manipulation. They must pay the price for their wrongful actions," said Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Wang said China was not worried about the "domino effect" of a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, after Australia, Britain, and Canada joined the United States in deciding not to send officials to the Games.

"I don't see any need to worry about the domino effect. On the contrary, most countries in the world have expressed their support for the Beijing Winter Olympics," Wang explained when asked about the possibility of more boycotts.