China blames the US as Russia's war breaks out in Europe - CNN

China blames the US as Russia's war breaks out in Europe - CNN: But while state media reflected the official government line, top trending topics on Weibo, China's Twitter-like platform, included a speech by Russian President Vladimir Putin with more than 360 million views, as well as others looking at how Ukrainian citizens were reacting, such as a post on people lining up to donate blood with 62 million views. The topic "Ukraine President says Western countries completely give up on Ukraine," topped the list in the morning, raking up over 1 billion views throughout the day and tens of thousands of comments. Many of those comments on the highly moderated platform mocked Ukraine and its President Volodymyr Zelensky for being "pro-West" and cheered for Russia and Putin. But others pushed back: "War is not funny at all," wrote one user, whose post was liked over 60,000 times. "It makes me feel physically sick to see all the jokes about war." Elsewhere online, homepages of China's major state media outlets took a measured approach, citing statements and news from both the Ukrainian and Russian side, while putting focus on sanctions leveraged by other countries against Russia. Communist Party mouthpiece the People's Daily highlighted comments from China's Foreign Ministry pointing to how the US had been "increasing tensions and hyping up war." A glimpse of the kind of guidance that state media may be under emerged Tuesday, when what appeared to be an internal memo from Chinese state media Beijing News directing its employees not to publish news reports "negative to Russia or pro-West" was mistakenly published on the outlet's official social media account. The post, which was swiftly deleted, also directed employees to "filter and release proper comments." Beijing government-controlled Beijing News declined CNN's request for comment on the incident.