Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday said he would meet with China’s Xi Jinping — after Beijing called for peace talks to end the war — though he categorically refused to negotiate with Vladimir Putin.
“I am planning to meet with Xi Jinping,” Zelensky said during a wide-ranging, two-hour press conference on the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “This will be important for world security.”
He did not say when or where the meeting would take place.
“It’s an important signal that they are preparing to take part in this theme,” he added from Kyiv, referring to China’s bid to broker peace between the two countries.
“So far, I see this as a signal — I don’t know what will happen later.”
He also warned Russia-allied China to not provide Moscow with arms.
“I very much want to believe that China will not deliver weapons to Russia, and for me this is very important,” he said.
“This is point number one.”
Zelensky, meanwhile, rejected the idea of negotiating with Putin.
Responding to a question from a Turkish reporter, Zelensky said that in 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 that time. Now he thinks he could [get Putin to negotiate],” Zelensky said. “But now we cannot do it because it is not the same person. There is no one to talk to.”
In October, Zelensky signed a decree formally declaring negotiations with Putin to be “impossible.”
“He does not know what dignity and honesty are. Therefore, we are ready for a dialog with Russia, but with another president of Russia,” Zelensky said at the time.
On Friday, Zelensky reiterated his oft-stated position that any peace talks with Russia would have to be preceded by an immediate cessation of all hostilities and a complete withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine’s territory.
“If you do all that, then we would tell you in which format we would 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.
But the Russian foreign ministry said Friday the world should recognize “new territorial realities” in Ukraine as a precondition of peace, suggesting that the Kremlin should be allowed to keep 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 city of Bakhmut in the east, which has seen some of the bloodiest fighting of the war.
The Wall Street Journal reported, citing official sources, that some of the NATO alliance’s most influential members, including Germany, France and Britain, are now encouraging Ukraine to consider peace talks — even if Putin’s troops continue to occupy portions of its land.
Publicly, the leaders of those three nations have promised to support Ukraine for as long as it takes.
The comments come just weeks after the NATO bloc, led by the US, has agreed to supply 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 first batch of its Leopard tanks had already arrived in Ukraine.
During Friday’s press conference, Zelensky was asked about a comment attributed to US Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joins Chiefs of Staff, who reportedly suggested that Ukraine won’t be able to drive Russian forces out of the entire occupied territory.
Zelensky responded that he did not 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 think that … he should speed up the supply of weapons.”
He also noted that unlike President Biden, who visited Kyiv last week to show his government’s support for Ukraine, Milley has yet to make the trip, even though “he’s been invited.”
Before attending an online G7 summit Friday, Biden tweeted: “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia. Never.”
The US and its fellow G7 nations pledged to intensify their support for Ukraine and proclaimed that they would never recognize the illegal annexation by Russia of Ukraine’s lands.
With Post wires
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