China has proposed a 12 point peace plan to start discussions towards ending the war by Russia against Ukraine. And Ukraine’s leader wants to meet Xi Jinping to hear more.
Zelenskyy said a meeting with Xi could be “useful” to both countries and for global security. “As far as I know, China respects historical integrity,” he told reporters in Kyiv.
Zelensky said Friday Ukraine “will work with China” if they show respect for international law and territorial integrity. The Ukrainian president said he would like to hold a bilateral meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Positioning within Ukraine both for and against is already underway.
Here’s the points in summary:
Full text for each of the points is here.
“I believe that the fact that China started talking about Ukraine is not bad,” Zelenskyy said, according to the Associated Press. “But the question is what follows the words. The question is in the steps and where they will lead to.”
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak called the Chinese proposals “unrealistic” in a tweet on Saturday.
Zelenskyy also warned Beijing against providing Russia with weapons, something of increasing concern to Western governments. China is considering providing drones and ammunition to help Moscow’s war efforts in Ukraine, a person familiar with the matter told POLITICO on Friday.
“I very much want to believe that China will not deliver weapons to Russia, and for me this is very important,” Zelenskyy said, according to Reuters.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Friday said the alliance is closely monitoring China’s activities, adding that Beijing sending lethal aid to Moscow would be a “very big mistake.”
A key difficulty is that with the United States, Russia and China all on the UN Security Council as permanent members, it simply can’t usefully function in this case.
China has set out its studied neutrality by even declining to condemn Russia’s invasion by UN resolution, right on the 1 year anniversary of the invasion. With so many Ukrainian’s killed by Russians, that’s fairly cold. But that is the job of diplomacy.
This puts China in the position of country most likely to be able to broker anything at all between Russia and Ukraine, other than Turkey. And Turkey is a NATO member.
With neither side able to win, Zelinsky is making the first move, with China, towards ending this war.
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