As President Trump continues to host meetings with the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and European countries to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is warning that the U.S. must not take its eye off the primary threat of communist China.

As Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday and other European leaders to attempt to hammer out a peace agreement, Russia continued to pound civilian targets in Ukraine. Reuters reported that overnight drone strikes killed at least 10 people in a residential neighborhood in northeastern Kharkiv, including an entire family that included “a toddler and her 16-year-old brother.”

As Russia’s relentless drone and bomb campaign has ground on against Ukrainian civilian populations for the last three and a half years, killing an estimated 14,000 civilians, observers like former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are highlighting the fact that China has poured money and arms into Vladimir Putin’s armed invasion.

“We shouldn’t forget for a moment — the Chinese Communist Party is in that room with Putin and Trump [during Friday’s summit],” he told “This Week on Capitol Hill” host Tony Perkins over the weekend. “They have been in this war. They have provided resources. They have provided technology. They’ve purchased the Russian gas that has given the money to Vladimir Putin to build out his war machine. They love the fact that the Europeans are tied up in Ukraine fighting there.”

Pompeo continued, “Make no mistake about it, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has chosen a side here. They chose the evildoer Vladimir Putin against the United States and the West. He very much wants to see Vladimir Putin be successful on the ground there in Ukraine. You’ve got North Korean soldiers in Ukraine. That did not happen without Xi Jinping saying, ‘You go there and help my friend Vladimir.’ The Chinese Communist Party very much has an interest in seeing Vladimir Putin prevail, and the United States has a corollary interest in ensuring that that does not happen.”

Pompeo, who also previously served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency during President Trump’s first term, went on to contend that even as Russia continues to pose a threat to Europe, the U.S. must stay focused on the threat in the East.

“It’s very clear that the Europeans are going to have to take on the bulk of the security arrangement in the aftermath of this conflict in Ukraine,” he argued. “It will end. … We’ll do our share. … But the United States’s existential threat, the thing that can change our religious freedom in the United States of America, our basic human rights around the world, the thing that matters to Americans, is the risk that the Chinese Communist Party presents to us over the next two, five, and 10 years. And so, we have to focus on that.”

As if to punctuate Pompeo’s point, the U.S. State Department released an annual report last week on the egregious human rights violations that Beijing continues to perpetrate, including its extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, torture, and arbitrary arrests of Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang, other religious minorities, and political dissidents, in addition to “forced abortions, forced sterilizations, involuntary intrauterine device insertions, and pregnancy checks” of targeted minority groups.

The report also highlighted the extreme lengths that Xi Jinping’s communist regime goes to in order to suppress and control the free speech of its citizens and spread pro-government propaganda through its control of state-run media. As National Review reported Monday, this effort extends to overseas influence operations, particularly against the U.S., as it recently lured a group of high school students in a gospel choir from Iowa to travel to China last month, where they were unwittingly caught up in a pro-CCP propaganda operation.

Experts like Pompeo say that President Trump’s recent direct action against Iran will prove useful in future dealings with China.

“The fact that [Trump] chose to take that strike [was significant]. … They seem disconnected — the United States taking a strike in Iran and Xi Jinping in China. But Xi Jinping saw that this is a different character,” he insisted. “This is real American leadership prepared to take mitigated risks in a way that protects the American people. We have to focus on Chinese Communist Party propaganda inside the United States. We have to build out our military capabilities in the Pacific, and then we need to make sure that our partners in that region — just as Europeans help us in Europe — we need Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, India, South Korea, Australia, all of our allies in the Pacific to do their part to push back against the threat from the Chinese Communist Party as well.”

As far as how the U.S. can combat the threat that Beijing poses, Pompeo laid out several facets that should be focused on.

“First, there is a U.S. government piece of this,” he emphasized. “We continue to call them out for what they’re doing. I will say Secretary [Antony] Blinken did that. He didn’t work as hard at it as I wish he would have, but he made clear that what was happening in Xinjiang was also genocide. Secretary [Marco] Rubio has continued this as well, so I think this is a threat the United States must continue to press on. Second, the churches across the world must do this too. The Catholic Church has given too much space for the Chinese Communist Party to select their bishops. They haven’t pushed back hard enough. The underground churches continue to remain under threat, so Christian leaders around the world need to continue to apply pressure.”

Pompeo also highlighted the importance of fighting against China’s war on free speech. “You see what’s happened to Jimmy Lai, who was a great freedom fighter, a great defender of religious and First Amendment freedoms inside of Hong Kong. We all need a global effort — governments and NGOs, religious leaders, and private citizens and businesses on the technology side to make sure that we protect the things that matter most to the United States of America. … It is not easy, and it will take a lot of work, but we’re going to get there.”

Pompeo concluded by underscoring how vital faith is in defeating the communist regime. “[A]s the secretary of State … I came to see how important religious leaders and religious followers were all across the world — that prayer, that hard work, that focus on things that are fundamentally important to basic human rights and the ability to practice one faith around the world are central to American success. I’m counting on the Christian churches of the world to unite, to push back against the threat from the Chinese Communist Party in the name of Jesus. If we get that right, I’m very confident we’ll prevail.”