DIPLOMATIC DROP:
The Foreign Ministry said Thursday that the Russian president had denigrated Taiwan by calling the nation part of China.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent comments that Taiwan was provoking China, calling them a “distortion.”

Putin’s remarks on Taiwan at a meeting of the Valdai discussion club in the Russian city of Sochi on Thursday were “a complete distortion of the truth”, the Foreign Ministry said in a press release.

Taiwan “strongly condemns” the Russian leader for his comments that “denigrate Taiwan” as part of China and “misrepresent Taiwan’s sovereign status,” the foreign ministry said.

Photo: Lu Yi-hsuan, Taipei Times

The Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other and the Chinese Communist Party has never controlled Taiwan, the ministry added.

The Foreign Ministry was responding to Putin’s comments that echoed Beijing’s territorial claims over Taiwan and accusations that Taiwan was stoking a Ukraine-style crisis in Asia to attract external support, Reuters reported.

The ministry said democratic nations around the world responded to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine with condemnation and punitive measures in support of Ukrainians’ struggle for survival and sovereignty, as well as by a common defense of universal values.

Taiwan, facing military threats from China, has worked tirelessly to protect its own survival and sovereignty, and has been at the forefront of safeguarding democracy and freedom in the Indo-Pacific region, the Foreign Ministry added. .

Russian leaders, who reaffirmed their “comprehensive partnership and strategic cooperation” with China in May, have repeatedly publicly defended Beijing’s claims to Taiwan.