While Russian troops have battered Ukraine, officials in China have been meeting behind closed doors to study a Communist Party-produced documentary that extols President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia as a hero.

The humiliating collapse of the Soviet Union, the video says, was the result of efforts by the US to destroy its legitimacy. With swelling music and sunny scenes of present-day Moscow, the documentary praises Putin for restoring Stalin’s standing as a great wartime leader and for renewing patriotic pride in Russia’s past.

To the world, China casts itself as a principled onlooker of the war in Ukraine, not picking sides, simply seeking peace. At home, though, the Chinese Communist Party is pushing a campaign that paints Russia as a long-suffering victim rather than an aggressor and defends China’s strong ties with Moscow as vital.

Chinese universities have organised classes to give students a “correct understanding” of the war, often highlighting Russia’s grievances with the West. Party newspapers have run series of commentaries blaming the US for the conflict.

Around the country, the Communist Party has organised sessions for officials to watch and discuss the history documentary. The 101 minute-long video, which was completed last year, does not mention the war in Ukraine but argues that Russia is right to worry about neighbours that broke away from the Soviet Union. It describes Putin as cleansing Russia of the political toxins that killed the Soviet Union.

“The most powerful weapon possessed by the West is, aside from nuclear weapons, the methods they use in ideological struggle,” says the documentary’s stern-voiced narrator, citing a Russian scholar. The documentary was marked for internal viewing — that is, for audiences chosen by party officials and not for general public release — but the video and script have recently surfaced online in China.

Since the demise of the Soviet Union, it says, “some countries in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and Transcaucasia have become forward positions for the West to contain and meddle in Russia.”

China’s leaders have long used the Soviet collapse as a cautionary tale, but Xi has given that tale a more urgent, ominous spin. In doing so, he has embraced Putin as a fellow authoritarian lined up against Western dominance, demonstrating to the Chinese people that Xi has a partner in his cause.

China has refused to condemn Putin for the war, which has killed thousands of civilians. Despite pressure from other world leaders to use its influence over Moscow to help end the crisis, Beijing has done little besides call for peace.

(New York Times News Service)

Mykolaiv hit by strikes

A residential area of the city of Mykolaiv, in Ukraine’s south, was targeted by Russian forces on Monday, according to the city’s mayor, the latest strikes on a city that has been under constant shelling for days.

Alarms had rung throughout the night in Mykolaiv, a once-thriving industrial city that was home to half a million people before the Russian invasion.

In a statement posted on social media, Oleksandr Syenkevych, Mykolaiv’s mayor, said a number of missiles had targeted Mykolaiv since the early hours of Monday, and he later told CNN that at least one person had been killed. (NYTNS)