内容摘要：China offered robust diplomatic support to Moscow after its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine and has emerged as a top market for Russian oil and gas, helping to fill the Kremlin’s war coffers. Russia has relied on China as the main source of machinery and electronics to keep its military running after Western sanctions curtailed high-tech supplies.

China offered robust diplomatic support to Moscow after its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine and has emerged as a top market for Russian oil and gas, helping to fill the Kremlin’s war coffers. Russia has relied on China as the main source of machinery and electronics to keep its military running after Western sanctions curtailed high-tech supplies.

“They paid a tax, these Arab rulers, to the United States,” he said.But in the following years, he began rebranding himself and the armed group he led. In 2016, he announced that he had severed ties with al-Qaida. He began appearing in public unmasked and in military garb, and changed his group’s name to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — the Organization for Liberating Syria — as it consolidated control over a swath of northwestern Syria.

His transformation — both political and sartorial — continued in 2021, when he gave an interview to an American network. This time he appeared in a shirt and trousers, with his short hair gelled back, and said his group posed no threat to the West. He also called for the lifting of sanctions on Syria.After leading the lightning insurgency that toppled Assad, al-Sharaa promised a new Syria.He vowed to rid the country of Iranian influence and Iran-backed armed groups such as the Lebanese militia Hezbollah. He promised an inclusive, representative government that would allow the country’s many ethnic and religious groups to live in peace.

Washington lifted the terror designation weeks after he took power, and he was embraced by Turkey and Saudi Arabia, whose de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, hosted Wednesday’s meeting with Trump.But the difficulties have been daunting.

Fourteen years of war left large areas in ruins and, along with the sanctions, devastated the economy. An estimated

lives in poverty. Assad’s rule and the civil war also left deep fissures between the country’s Sunni minority and the Alawite minority from which Assad hailed, and which benefited from his rule. Those rifts have proven tough to heal.The leaders pledged tougher sanctions on Russia if Putin did not accept the proposal.

in remarks to the media overnight effectively rejected the offer and proposedin Istanbul on Thursday instead “without preconditions.” He did not specify whether the talks on Thursday would involve Zelenskyy and himself personally.

He said a ceasefire might be agreed on during the negotiations — but stressed that the Kremlin needs a truce that would lead to a “lasting peace” instead of one that would allow Ukraine to rearm and mobilize more men into its armed forces.Zelenskyy said on X on Sunday morning that it was a “positive sign that the Russians have finally begun to consider ending the war,” but insisted on a ceasefire first.