Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodimir Zelensky, have spoken by phone, in what would be the first known contact between the two leaders since the start of the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022. Beijing, main partner Russia's trade union, presented in March a proposal that he described as his peace plan for the Ukrainian conflict days before the Chinese leader's visit to Moscow, where he staged his friendship with Vladimir Putin.
Kyiv and its NATO allies then rejected the Chinese peace proposal (which Moscow later did as well) because it favored Russian advances in the region, but Zelensky welcomed China's willingness to get involved in a conflict that has so far not yet occurred. condemned. And he invited Xi to travel to Kyiv while the EU leaders suggested that he pick up the phone, because if he really wanted to work for peace, he had to talk with both parties.
Zelensky reported on Twitter that he had a "long and significant" meeting with Xi, in a conversation that lasted almost an hour, according to his spokesman. The Ukrainian president noted that he hoped this first contact would trigger "a powerful boost in the development of bilateral relations" between Kyiv and Beijing.
For his part, the Chinese president told him that "negotiation" is the only way out of the conflict, state television CCTV reported. "China has always been on the side of peace and its fundamental position is to promote a peace dialogue," said the president in line with the position maintained by the Chinese leader since he presented his plan.
Ukraine's president had wanted to talk to Xi for months in the hope that China's stance on the Russian invasion would be more favorable to Kyiv, but experts reveal that Beijing was not responding to Ukrainian requests.
China officially calls itself neutral on the Ukraine conflict, but has so far staged a closeness with Russia and joined Russian demands such as the lifting of Western sanctions against Moscow. In his recent meeting with Putin in Moscow, Xi reaffirmed his association of him with the Russian president under the guise of an anti-Western front.
During a visit to China in early April, French head of state Emmanuel Macron urged Xi Jinping to "bring Russia to reason" over Ukraine and urged him not to hand over weapons in Moscow. A fact, the latter, that China has flatly denied, despite warnings from Western allies.
