Ukraine tells China it is open to talks with Russia if Moscow acts in good faith

BEIJING – Ukraine’s top diplomat told Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at talks in the city of Guangzhou on July 24 that Kyiv was open to talks with Russia if Moscow was prepared to negotiate in good faith, something he said he saw no evidence of for now.

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba is the highest-ranking Ukrainian official to travel to China since

Russia’s February 2022 invasion

and held talks with Mr Wang Yi for more than three hours, a Ukrainian source in the delegation said.

“Kuleba restated... that (Kyiv) is ready to engage the Russian side in the negotiation process at a certain stage, when Russia is ready to negotiate in good faith, but emphasised that no such readiness is currently observed on the Russian side,” the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Russian troops have been inching forward in eastern Ukraine in the 29-month-old invasion ahead of a US election in November that could see the return of Donald Trump to the White House. Trump has threatened to cut vital aid flows to Ukraine.

China, the world’s second-largest economy, positions itself as neutral on the war, but

declared a “no limits” partnership

with Russia days before the 2022 invasion and has hosted President Vladimir Putin for talks, most recently in May.

China has also provided diplomatic backing to Russia and helped keep Russia’s wartime economy afloat.

“The talks have just concluded,” a Ukrainian source in the delegation told Reuters. “They lasted for over three hours in total, longer than planned. This was a very deep and concrete conversation.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a regular news conference in Beijing that both ministers had talked up the need to take a long-term view on building bilateral ties and that China would “continue to expand its food imports from Ukraine”.

She added that China was concerned by the humanitarian situation in Ukraine and would continue to provide humanitarian assistance.

Ms Mao also said both the Russian and Ukrainian sides had “to varying degrees signalled their willingness to negotiate” in the war. “Although the conditions are not yet ripe, we support all efforts conducive to peace and are willing to continue to play a constructive role in bringing about a ceasefire and the resumption of peace talks.”

The Kremlin told reporters that Mr Kuleba’s remark appeared to tally with Russia’s own position, but that it needed more details to assess what was being proposed.

Mr Putin said in June that Moscow would end the war if Kyiv retreated from and handed over the rest of four partially-occupied Ukrainian provinces, and dropped its Nato ambitions,

an idea shot down in Kyiv as an absurd ultimatum

.

Kyiv is pushing to hold a second international summit later in 2024 to advance its vision for peace, after

an initial gathering in Switzerland in June

drew dozens of delegations from around the world but not from Russia or China.

Ukraine has said it would like its second summit to be hosted by a “Global South” country, and that Russia should attend.

With the prospect of a Trump presidency looming, there has been a flurry of diplomacy in recent months.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban travelled to Kyiv, Moscow, Beijing and Washington in July on what he described as a “peace mission”.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed Mr Orban’s efforts, saying that only powerful countries such as the US or China, or the European Union bloc were in a position to play a mediation role.

China and Brazil published a joint six-point peace proposal in May, saying they supported the holding of an international peace conference that both sides in the war would recognise. REUTERS