Moscow has expressed its scepticism regarding Chinese President Xi Jinping’s telephonic dialogue with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in which he stressed that talks are the only viable way out of the Ukraine crisis. Commenting on the Xi-Zelenskyy dialogue, Russian Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson Maria Zakharova stated on Wednesday, April 26th, that Ukraine is unlikely to appreciate calls for peace, according to Russian news agency TASS.
On Wednesday, Xi held a telephonic discussion with Zelenskyy and commented that neither China is responsible for the Ukraine crisis, nor can it sit and watch idly, although it won’t add fuel to the fire. Xi underscored the need for dialogue and informed Zelenskyy that Beijing will facilitate peace between Russia and Ukraine.
However, Zakharova expressed her scepticism regarding the Ukrainian president’s commitment towards peace. “We have taken note of China’s willingness to make efforts to launch a negotiation process. We can see that our fundamental approaches are in line with the position paper that the Chinese Foreign Ministry released on February 24”, she said in a statement while responding to the Xi-Zelenskyy dialogue.
Zakharova also said, “So far, the Kiev regime has been rejecting all reasonable initiatives aimed at finding a political and diplomatic solution to the Ukrainian crisis”. She blamed the US-led western forces for fuelling the conflict through their extensive military support to the ‘rogue’ regime.
“By their (western powers) own admission, they only needed the Minsk Accords to buy time and increase offensive capabilities. In the spring of 2022, they suddenly rejected the peace agreements that the parties were about to reach at Kiev’s initiative. Vladimir Zelensky even signed a law to ban any talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. That said, Washington’s puppets are unlikely to appreciate any calls for peace (sic)”, Zakharova was quoted by TASS.
Sparking a debate on the “Taiwan” question, Zakharova claimed that the Ukrainian far-right ruling forces don’t recognise the “One China” policy as a realistic one but use it as hogwash. She highlighted the fact that the communist parties and the Marxist ideology have been banned in Ukraine, which makes the Ukrainian regime deeply anti-communist.
Zakharova highlighted that Alexander Merezhko, the head of Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada’s (parliament) Committee on International Affairs had recently claimed that the international community’s recognition of Taiwan as part of China was “a communist misconception”.
China and Russia have strengthened their alliance in the fast-changing world scenario, and the US-led western bloc accuses China of supplying state-of-the-art weapons to Moscow to aid its “special military operations” in Ukraine. Beijing has vehemently denied the claim. During the Xi-Zelenskyy dialogue, the Chinese president emphasised that China would continue to send humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and will play a major role in peacefully resolving the conflict and restoring normalcy, which goes against the western goal of prolonging the conflict.
