BEIJING: Ukraine’s top diplomat told China’s foreign minister at talks in the southern city of Guangzhou on Wednesday 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 Foreign Minister 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,” his 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 to the White House of Donald Trump, who 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. They lasted for over three hours in total, longer than planned. This was a very deep and concrete conversation,” a Ukrainian source in the delegation said.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson told a regular press 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”.

Mao Ning added that China was concerned by the humanitarian situation in Ukraine.

She also said that both the Russian and Ukrainian sides had “to varying degrees signalled their willingness to negotiate”.

“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,” she added.

‘Peace Diplomacy’

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

Russian President Vladimir Putin said in June 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 plans to hold a second international summit later this year 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 possible 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 this month on what he described as a “peace mission”.

Published in Dawn, July 25th, 2024