Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, said this week that his country doesn’t want China to try to mediate peace talks with Russia to end the war between the two neighbors, which has been raging for 29 months now.
At the same time, he did say he hoped that Beijing would work to apply greater pressure on Moscow to stop its war.
Speaking to media outlets in France on Wednesday, Zelenskyy added that Ukraine might make a slight concession to restart peace talks. If the conditions are right, he said Ukraine would consider starting talks before Russia got all of its troops out of Ukraine, as long as certain conditions were met.
Ukraine is insistent that if the war is to end, the borders of its country that were established in 1991 after the fall of the Soviet Union must be restored.
As the president told reporters:
“If China wants to, it can force Russia to stop this war. I do not want (China) to act as a mediator. I would like it to put pressure on Russia to put an end to this war.
“Just as the United States is applying pressure, just as the European Union is applying pressure. The more influence a country has, the greater should be its pressure on Russia.”
China has already advanced a peace plan of its own that would end the Ukraine-Russia war. It includes humanitarian assistance, direct negotiations and non-escalation.
At the same time, it’s hard to overlook the fact that China has a “no limits” partnership in place with Russia.
Switzerland hosted a peace summit about Ukraine last month, but China was not present. At the same time, the country has stepped up its diplomatic efforts, hosting Dmytro Kuleba, the foreign minister of Ukraine, just last week.
Russia was not allowed to attend the peace summit, but Zelenskyy said they should attend one in the future that he is planning to hold sometime this year.
As he said:
“Otherwise, we will not obtain viable results. All our conditions will be in place. That does not mean that at that precise moment, we will recover our 1991 borders. …
“[A just peace for Ukraine] involves recovering our territorial integrity, but that does not mean that this must be done solely through arms.”
Russian troops occupy just shy of 20% of territory in Ukraine, but they’ve been making gains incrementally in the eastern part of the war’s front since February, when they captured Avdiivka.
Those advances are something Zelenskyy acknowledged in his talks with French reporters this week, saying that happened because of delays in equipping their brigades.
As he said:
“It’s difficult throughout the eastern front. They are concentrating all their efforts in the east.”
Last month, Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, said his country was willing to talk about ending the war, but those talks are contingent on Ukraine agreeing to let go of the four regions that Russia annexed two years ago.
That’s just not an option for Ukraine, though. As Zelenskyy said:
“It’s impossible. It runs against our constitution. And it is an issue that is up to us alone.”
