Sanction-hit Russia faces similar problems to China after Tiananmen, says embassy

Russia is facing a similar diplomatic situation to that of China in 1989 after the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstration crackdown, the Russian embassy of China said in a commentary on its website on Thursday.

The story posted on the Russian embassy of China’s Chinese-language website and microblog was commenting on the latest round of military sanctions by the West on Russia over its controversial move to annex Crimea from the Ukraine.

“What is happening in Russia at present is similar to the situation facing China after the 1989 crisis,” the commentary said. “At the time, the United States and some European countries boycotted China over weapons exports and the exchange of military technology under the pretext of human rights violations,” read the article first published by the Russian official broadcaster, the Voice of Russia.

The crisis referred to, was the months-long pro-democracy protests that saw hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy protesters gather at Tiananmen Square in central Beijing in the summer of 1989. The stand-off was eventually violently crushed by Chinese military forces, sparking fierce denunciation from around the world, and the West in particular.

Within days, the United States and a number of major European countries introduced a number of sanctions against China, including the suspension of all military collaboration and the trade in arms.

The commentary called on Russia and China to expand the two countries’ military collaboration in areas where they can complement each other, “so that they can control the damage from the sanctions by western nations that will arrive soon-or-later.”