Blinken heads to Asia, with China, Russia tensions soaring

By MATTHEW LEE
AP Diplomatic Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel to Central and South Asia next week for international talks that will put him in the same room as his Chinese and Russian counterparts. Blinken is fresh from a meeting with China’s top diplomat and a U.N. Security Council session on Ukraine. The State Department says Blinken will travel to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan before going to India for a meeting of the Group of 20 foreign ministers from the world’s largest industrialized and developing countries. The trip comes as tensions have soared between the U.S. and Russia and between the U.S. and China over the war in Ukraine and Chinese assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific.