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Writer's pictureMichael Julien

Ukraine Presses China to Help Seek End to War With Russia – article for the New York Times – 24.07.24

A visit by the foreign minister of Ukraine to Guangzhou this week signals Kyiv’s desire to involve Beijing in peace talks that China has thus far largely snubbed.


In a photo released by Chinese state media, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, left, of Ukraine shakes hands with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, before talks in Guangzhou, China, on Wednesday.


Ukraine’s top diplomat met with China’s foreign minister on Wednesday in talks that signaled Kyiv’s increased willingness to pursue a diplomatic solution to the war with Russia and to have China play a more central role in the effort.


“I am convinced that a just peace in Ukraine is in China’s strategic interests,” Dmytro Kuleba said in a statement after a meeting with Wang Yi, the Chinese official, in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. “China’s role as a global force for peace is important.”


Mr. Kuleba made clear that Ukraine attached conditions to such negotiations, saying it would only engage Russia when Moscow was “ready to negotiate in good faith.” He added: “No such readiness is currently observed on the Russian side.”


Mr. Kuleba is visiting China for the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. His trip comes as Ukraine is slowly losing ground in the war and faces growing uncertainty about the level of support it will have from the West. Moscow and Kyiv briefly held peace talks in the spring of 2022 but they quickly broke down over critical issues.


For China, hosting Mr. Kuleba reflects the country’s ambition to play a bigger role in global security challenges as a counterweight to the United States. It also serves to rebut Western criticism of Beijing’s close alignment with Russia.


Mr. Wang said China was committed to finding a political solution to the crisis, adding that while the timing was not yet right, Moscow and Kyiv had “sent signals of their willingness to negotiate to varying degrees,” according to a readout from China’s Foreign Ministry.


Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, told reporters Mr. Kuleba’s reported openness to negotiations with Russia was “in unison with our position” and added that Russia has never refused talks.


Ukrainian and Western officials reject the idea that Russia is open to good-faith peace talks. They describe the Kremlin’s frequent messages about negotiations as a propaganda ruse designed to obfuscate the Kremlin’s determination to force Ukraine to capitulate.


President Vladimir V. Putin’s cease-fire conditions — that Ukraine gives up four frontline regions that Russia partly controls, and that Kyiv pledges to never join the NATO military alliance — are a nonstarter for Ukraine, leaving little to no room for negotiations. Ukraine, for its part, wants to regain full control of its territory and to join NATO, which is anathema to Moscow.


President Volodymyr Zelensky at a peace summit in Switzerland last month. Attempts by China to mediate between Moscow and Kyiv in June were quickly dismissed by leaders in Europe.


China’s previous attempt to mediate between Russia and Ukraine, with a 12-point plan it put forward in 2023, was quickly dismissed by European leaders. Beijing had since eschewed a public role in the war, declining to participate in a Ukrainian-held peace summit in Switzerland last month because Russia was not invited.


The summit eventually failed to rally support from regional powers such as India and Saudi Arabia. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, recently said Ukraine aimed to hold a second peace summit later this year, ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November, and that Russia should participate.


Beijing now may be calculating that the time is right to step in, partly based on a belief that Ukraine may be more realistic about how the war might end, said Yun Sun, the director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a foreign affairs think tank in Washington.


“The Chinese wanted to play the role of a peacemaker and they weren’t able to before because the timing was not mature, in that Ukraine still believed that it could prevail in winning the war on its own terms,” Ms. Sun said.



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Zixu Wang and Anton Troianovski contributed reporting.

 

Alexandra Stevenson reported from Hong Kong and Constant Méheut from Kyiv, Ukraine.


Alexandra Stevenson is the Shanghai bureau chief for The Times, reporting on China’s economy and society.


Constant Méheut reports on the war in Ukraine, including battlefield developments, attacks on civilian centers and how the war is affecting its people.



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