Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday in a conversation with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping that accusations against Beijing, suspected of misinformation about the new coronavirus, which appeared in China , were " counterproductive ".
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Vladimir Putin praised during this telephone call "the coherent and effective actions of the Chinese, which made it possible to stabilize the epidemiological situation in the country ", according to a press release from the Kremlin. Russian President also denounced " the counterproductive nature of attempts to accuse China of not informing the world soon enough of the appearance of a new dangerous infection ", calling for strengthening Russian-Chinese cooperation in the fight against the pandemic.
Donald Trump's government accuses Beijing of having " concealed " the gravity of the epidemic at its beginning in China and on Tuesday froze the American financial contribution to the functioning of the World Health Organization, accusing it of having aligned itself on Chinese positions. The United States and China, however, pledged on Wednesday to cooperate to fight the new coronavirus, despite tensions still high between the two great powers.
Washington also spoke on Thursday of an " investigation " to shed light on the origin of Covid-19, not seeming to exclude that the coronavirus came from a Chinese laboratory in Wuhan, the region of origin of the pandemic. Experts believe that the new coronavirus made its appearance in late 2019 in an open-air market in Wuhan, where exotic animals like bats were sold alive. The animal virus could have mutated there by spreading to humans.