2023-04-26 14:32:57
The presidents of China and Ukraine have spoken on the phone for the first time after more than a year of war (although Beijing never uses this word). The announcement was made by Beijing in English and, soon after, in Russian
After a year of delay and months of appeals from the international community, Xi Jinping has finally spoken to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
The phone call was announced by Beijing: Ms. Hua Chunying, assistant foreign minister and spokesperson he tweeted the news in English and then in Russian.
Shortly after, again on Twitter, Zelensky’s first statement. “I had one long and meaningful telephone conversation with the Chinese presidentI hope for an important development in bilateral relations» between Kiev and Beijing.
The phone call lasted about an hour, Ukrainian sources said. Beijing State TV reported that Xi told Zelensky that “dialogue and negotiation are the only way out” of the conflict with Russia.
Xi added that Beijing will send a special representative to Kiev for talks aimed at resolving the crisis.
On Feb. 24, China released its own
proposal for a “solution to the Ukrainian crisis” (That it defines neither war nor invasion from the Russian side) whose first point is the request for ceasefire, without however asking for the withdrawal of the Russian Army from the Ukrainian territories occupied by aggression.
Many European leaders, led by the French Emmanuel Macron, they ask Xi Jinping to put pressure on Putin and to mediate for the end of hostilities. But so far the Chinese leader had not taken any steps towards Ukraine, despite repeated invitations also from Zelensky to open a direct dialogue.
The latest news about the war in Ukraine, live
Now, in the long-awaited communication with Kiev, Xi has assured that China’s “fundamental position” is to “promote talks for peace”.
Xi hadn’t spoken to Zelensky since January 4, 2022: that day marked the thirtieth anniversary of diplomatic relations between Beijing and Kiev, established after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In the celebratory phone call, the Chinese president exalted the mutual trust, the commercial and cultural collaboration, the deep friendship between the two peoples. Exactly one month later, on February 4, Xi received Vladimir Putin in Beijing for the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics, deserted by Western leaders. She was proclaimed the «partnership without limits»
.
The Chinese deny that they were informed then that twenty days later, on February 24, 2022, the Russian Army would attack Ukraine.
It is significant that after a long wait, Xi decided to speak to Zelensky right after the case (scandal). statement by the Chinese ambassador in Paris
, who on Friday 21 April last week, answering a question about the Ukrainian borders and the Crimea occupied by the Russians in 2014, said: «It depends on how you perceive the problem. There is history. Crimea was part of Russia, it was Khrushchev who offered it to Ukraine at the time of the USSR». Chinese diplomat Lu Shaye added: «The countries of the former Soviet Union have no effective status in international law because there was no agreement to materialize their sovereignty”.
On April 23, the Chinese Foreign Ministry was forced to correct the statement of its ambassador, after three days during which protests had accumulated from European and Baltic countries (the latter freed in 1991 from Soviet rule). Beijing’s spokeswoman thus tried to extinguish the controversy: “After the disintegration of the USSR, the People’s Republic of China was one of the first countries to establish diplomatic relations with the states concerned and respect their sovereignty”. She was asked again if the ministry intended to retract the inflammatory words of Ambassador Lu Shaye and the lady replied: «What I can tell you is that my statement represents the formal position of the Chinese government». Mao Ning also repeated the by now customary formula pronounced by the Chinese regarding the war: ready to continue to give our contribution to the international community for the solution of the Ukrainian crisis (without calling it an invasion, so as not to displease Putin).
April 26, 2023 (change April 26, 2023 | 2:38 pm)
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