NATO chief backs China’s peace plan for Russia-Ukraine war

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said Thursday he supports China’s peace proposal aimed at ending Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Orbán, one of the few NATO leaders sympathetic to Russian President Vladimir Putin, endorsed the peace plan during his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Budapest.

China’s Foreign Ministry released the 12-point peace plan on February 24, 2023, to coincide with the first anniversary of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. In the proposal, Beijing details a “political settlement” to the war by calling on both sides to respect the sovereignty of nations, safeguard nuclear sites and protect prisoners of war, among other points.

“Today Europe is on the side of war,” Orbán said at a joint news conference with Xi. “The only exception is Hungary, which calls for an immediate ceasefire and peace negotiations and supports all international efforts towards peace… We also support the Chinese peace initiative presented by Xi Jinping.”

Xi, like Orbán, remained one of Putin’s closest allies throughout the Russian invasion. Putin and Xi have publicly pledged to further strengthen ties between their countries several times over the past two years, while U.S. officials recently claimed that goods exported from China to Russia support Moscow’s defense industrial base .

At a joint news conference with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Monday, Xi disputed accusations that he was aiding Russia’s war efforts.

“China is neither the creator of the crisis nor a party or participant. But we are also not a spectator, we have always actively contributed to achieving peace,” Xi said. “We also oppose the use of the Ukraine crisis to shift blame or defame a third country and provoke a new Cold War.”

On Thursday, Orbán also described China as a peace-promoting nation, calling it “one of the pillars of the new world order.”

News week contacted Orbán’s office by email Thursday evening for further comment.

While some Western observers called China’s peace plan vague when it was released, Russia has been willing to review it.

According to the Kremlin-run RIA Novosti news agency, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the Chinese proposal “reasonable” in an interview with journalists last month.

“The most important thing for us is that the Chinese document is based on an analysis of the reasons for what is happening and the need to eliminate these root causes. It is structured according to a logic going from general to specific,” said Mr. . Lavrov.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke by phone with Xi two months after the Chinese proposal was published. Although he did not mention the peace plan, the Ukrainian leader spoke of this hour of conversion in positive terms.

“I had a long and meaningful phone call with President Xi Jinping,” Zelensky wrote on in China, will give a powerful impetus to the development of our bilateral relations.