(Reuters) – The Russian president Vladimir Poutinein an interview published Wednesday, said he supports China’s plan for a peaceful settlement of the Ukraine crisis, saying Beijing fully understands what is behind the crisis.
Putin, speaking to China’s Xinhua news agency ahead of his visit to Beijing this week, said Russia remained open to dialogue and talks to resolve the more than two-year-old conflict.
China’s plan and other “principles” released by President Xi Jinping last month took into account the factors behind the conflict, Putin said.
“We are positive in our assessment of China’s approach to resolving the Ukrainian crisis,” Putin said, according to a Russian-language transcript posted on the Kremlin website. “In Beijing, they really understand its root causes and its global geopolitical significance.”
And the additional principles, outlined by Xi during his talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, were “realistic and constructive measures” that “develop the idea of the need to overcome the Cold War mentality.”
Beijing presented a 12-point document more than a year ago that laid out general principles for ending the war, but did not go into detail.
It received a mixed reception in Russia and Ukraine at the time, while the United States said China presented itself as a peacemaker but reflected Russia’s “false narrative” and did not condemn its invasion.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov last month called the proposal “a reasonable plan that the great Chinese civilization has proposed to discuss.”
Xi’s additional principles call for a “cooling down” of the situation, conditions conducive to restoring peace, creating stability and minimizing impacts on the global economy.
Russia views the conflict as a struggle against the “collective West” which has ignored Moscow’s security concerns by promoting NATO’s eastward expansion and military activity near of its borders.
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation” aimed at disarming Ukraine and protecting it from fascists. Ukraine and the West say the fascist allegations are baseless and that the war is an unprovoked act of aggression.
Russia and China proclaimed a “no-holds-barred” relationship just days before Moscow launches its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but Beijing has so far avoided providing actual weapons and munitions for the effort Russian war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s peace plan calls for withdrawing Russian troops, restoring its 1991 post-Soviet borders and holding Russia accountable for its actions.
A “peace summit” is planned in Switzerland in June. But Russia is not invited, rejects the initiative as meaningless and says negotiations must take into account “new realities”.
China participated in some preparatory discussions for the summit, and Ukraine made great efforts to persuade it to participate.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski in Winnipeg; editing by Lincoln Feast.)
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