US State Department’s Ned Price threatened Chinese firms with consequences if they try to skirt hypothetical US sanctions against Russia. Washington says it has “an array of tools” to deal with foreign companies that refuse to observe US sanctions.
Ned Price, a spokesperson for US President Joe Biden’s State Department, threatened Chinese businesses with economic punishment if they decide to work with Russia through any hypothetical US sanctions.
During a press conference on Thursday, Price claimed the US has “an array of tools that we can deploy if we see foreign companies, including those in China, doing their best to backfill US export control actions, to evade them, to get around them.”
“If Russia thinks that it will be in a position… to mitigate some of those consequences, by a closer relationship with [China], that is not the case. It will actually make the Russian economy, in many ways, more brittle,” Price warned, in reference to hypothetical US sanctions against Russia over a hypothetical Russia invasion of Ukraine.
Price continued to warn Russia it cannot survive without the West, claiming that “if you deny yourself the ability to transact with the West, to import with the West, from Europe, from the United States, you are going to significantly degrade your productive capacity and your innovative potential.”
In the same press conference, Price claimed to have US intelligence evidence that Russia was planning a false flag attack in Ukraine to justify an invasion of the country. Price was berated, however, by an AP journalist for refusing to provide a single piece of evidence to the public to justify such claims.
Earlier on Thursday the Biden administration and US intelligence came out with some explosive and outlandish claims, saying Russia is planning to release a video depicting graphic scenes of a “staged false explosion with corpses, actors depicting mourners, and images of destroyed locations and military equipment,” as CNN described it. This in order to justify a military invasion of Ukraine, given the false flag operation would feature Russian-backed separatists under attack by Ukrainian forces.
Given such a narrative has been advanced in public, grabbing global headlines, but without so much as a shred of evidence – even mainstream media pundits are scratching their heads. Watch Associated Press writer Matt Lee demolish the State Department’s Ned Price, who refuses to provide any level of proof backing the bizarre and surprising claims. “This is like Alex Jones territory you’re getting into now!” Lee points out…
Reporter: “It’s an action that you say they have taken, but you have shown no evidence to confirm that. […] This is like – crisis actors? Really? This is like Alex Jones territory you’re getting into now.”
Must-watch exchange between @APDiploWriter Matt Lee and @StateDeptSpox. pic.twitter.com/RPIPb2zwf5
— The Hill (@thehill) February 3, 2022
Moscow has repeatedly dismissed accusations that it’s planning an invasion of Ukraine as “hysteria”, and even Kiev at one point has criticized Western officials and media for damaging its economy with constant fear mongering about an “imminent” war.