Ukrainian FM Kuleba signals willingness to negotiate with Russia after meeting Chinese counterpart
Ukraine's top diplomat told Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi during talks in the city of Guangzhou on Wednesday that Kyiv was open to negotiating with Russia if Moscow was ready to do so in good faith, something Kyiv saw no evidence of currently.
Ukrainian FM Kuleba signals willingness to negotiate with Russia after meeting Chinese counterpart
Geurasia

Ukrainian FM Kuleba signals willingness to negotiate with Russia after meeting Chinese counterpart

Photo: Lu Hanxin/Xinhua/AFP
Eurasia 24/07/2024 18:21

Ukraine's top diplomat told Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi during talks in the city of Guangzhou on Wednesday that Kyiv was open to negotiating with Russia if Moscow was ready to do so in good faith, something Kyiv saw no evidence of currently.

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba is the highest ranking Ukrainian official to travel to China since Russia's February 2022 invasion, he held talks with Wang Yi for more than three hours, a Ukrainian source in the delegation said to Reuters.

"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 emphasized that no such readiness is currently observed on the Russian side," his ministry said in a statement.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson 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".

Mao Ning added that China was concerned by the humanitarian situation in Ukraine and would continue to provide humanitarian assistance.
She also said that 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," she added.

As reported by Hungarian Conservative, in recent weeks, Kyiv has repeatedly indicated its desire to organize an event similar to the peace conference held in Switzerland in early June. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, among others, mentioned this intention after his talks with Viktor Orbán, when the latter commenced his peace mission in Kyiv.

Ukraine has stated that it would like the second summit to be hosted by a Global South country and has indicated that Russia should attend. Kyiv has also expressed a wish for China to play a more active role in ending the war. This statement aligns with one of the points in Viktor Orbán’s ten-point proposal on the peaceful settlement in Ukraine. The Hungarian Prime Minister wrote to European Council President Charles Michel, suggesting, among other things, that the European Union should initiate a debate on holding high-level political talks with China regarding the modalities for the next peace conference.

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