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Lucinda Creighton: Japan’s stance on Ukraine shows the unnerving effects of Chinese expansionism

The decision by the Japanese prime minister to visit Kyiv last week was a highly unusual one, and underlines just how destabilising Chinese foreign policy has become

ˇFumio Kishida, Japan's prime minister and Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Ukraine's president, in Mariinsky Palace, in Kyiv, Ukraine, last week. Picture: Bloomberg

It has been another significant week in geopolitics, with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian president Vladimir Putin holding a bilateral meeting in Moscow – their 40th such meeting in the past decade. It was all the more significant given that it came just days after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin for carrying out war crimes in Ukraine.

The warrant accuses Putin of committing criminal acts both directly and in ...