Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday said he would meet with China’s Xi Jinping — after Beijing called for peace talks to finish the war — though he categorically refused to barter with Vladimir Putin.
“I’m planning to fulfill with Xi Jinping,” Zelensky said during a wide-ranging, two-hour press conference on the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “This will probably be vital for world security.”
He didn’t say when or where the meeting would happen.
“It’s a vital signal that they’re preparing to participate on this theme,” he added from Kyiv, referring to China’s bid to broker peace between the 2 countries.
“To date, I see this as a signal — I don’t know what is going to occur later.”
He also warned Russia-allied China to not provide Moscow with arms.
“I very much wish to imagine that China is not going to deliver weapons to Russia, and for me this could be very vital,” he said.
“That is point primary.”
Zelensky, meanwhile, rejected the thought of negotiating with Putin.
Responding to a matter from a Turkish reporter, Zelensky said that within the lead-up to the invasion, he had asked Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to broker negotiations with the Russian president in a desperate bid to avert a full-scale war.
“[Erdogan] was unable to do it at the moment. Now he thinks he could [get Putin to negotiate],” Zelensky said. “But now we cannot do it since it is just not the identical person. There is no such thing as a one to seek advice from.”
In October, Zelensky signed a decree formally declaring negotiations with Putin to be “unimaginable.”
“He doesn’t know what dignity and honesty are. Due to this fact, we’re ready for a dialog with Russia, but with one other president of Russia,” Zelensky said on the time.
On Friday, Zelensky reiterated his oft-stated position that any peace talks with Russia would need to be preceded by an instantaneous cessation of all hostilities and an entire withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine’s territory.
“If you happen to do all that, then we’d let you know through which format we’d diplomatically put an end to the war,” he said.
Ukraine has maintained that Russia must pull its troops out of the five regions it has illegally annexed since 2014 and recognize the country’s 1991 borders.
However the Russian Foreign Ministry said Friday the world should recognize “latest territorial realities” in Ukraine as a precondition of peace, suggesting that the Kremlin needs to be allowed to maintain its territorial gains.
Despite meeting a fierce resistance from the outgunned and outnumbered Ukrainian forces, Russia has managed to capture about one-fifth of the country and has made incremental progress near the town of Bakhmut within the east, which has seen among the bloodiest fighting of the war.
The Wall Street Journal reported, citing official sources, that among the NATO alliance’s most influential members, including Germany, France and Britain, are encouraging Ukraine to think about peace talks — even when Putin’s troops proceed to occupy portions of its land.
Publicly, the leaders of those three nations have promised to support Ukraine for so long as it takes.
The comments come just weeks after the NATO bloc, led by the US, has agreed to provide battle tanks and other high-tech military equipment to Ukraine to bolster its capabilities.
The prime minister of NATO member Poland visiting Kyiv on the war anniversary announced that the primary batch of its Leopard tanks had already arrived in Ukraine.
During Friday’s press conference, Zelensky was asked a couple of comment attributed to US Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who reportedly suggested that Ukraine won’t have the ability to drive Russian forces out of the complete occupied territory.
Zelensky responded that he didn’t hear this during his meeting with Milley, but he added that “if Gen. Milley wants us to push the enemy out of our country, I believe that … he should speed up the provision of weapons.”
He also noted that unlike President Biden, who visited Kyiv last week to point out his government’s support for Ukraine, Milley has yet to make the trip, despite the fact that “he’s been invited.”
Before attending an internet G7 summit Friday, Biden tweeted: “Ukraine won’t ever be a victory for Russia. Never.”
The US and its fellow G7 nations pledged to accentuate their support for Ukraine and proclaimed that they might never recognize the illegal annexation by Russia of Ukraine’s lands.
With Post wires
