Beijing’s proposal to end Russia’s war on Ukraine draws guarded response

FORUM Staff

The People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) call for an end to Russia’s yearlong war on Ukraine was greeted cautiously in Kyiv and beyond in late February 2023 as concerns persist over Beijing’s backing of Moscow, including warnings by NATO and others that the PRC may be readying to supply arms to its belligerent neighbor.

“I believe that the fact that China started talking about Ukraine is not bad,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters, according to The Associated Press (AP). “But the question is what follows the words. The question is in the steps and where they will lead to.”

The PRC’s 12-point “Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis” includes generic calls for a ceasefire and peace talks but offers no details for achieving such goals. Although the document echoes some of Beijing’s anti-West refrains, including an ill-disguised swipe at the NATO security bloc, it also notes that the “threat or use of nuclear weapons should be opposed.” That language could be seen as critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has repeatedly raised the prospect of nuclear strikes and recently suspended Moscow’s participation in its only nuclear arms reduction pact with the United States. Ukraine has no nuclear weapons and is not a NATO member.

The Chinese proposal, however, fails to call on Putin to withdraw his forces and relinquish Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, which Russia illegally seized and annexed in 2014.

“China should do everything in its power to stop the war and restore peace in Ukraine and urge Russia to withdraw its troops,” Zhanna Leshchynska, Ukraine’s charge d’affaires to the PRC, said at a news briefing in Beijing. Leshchynska noted that Beijing had not consulted with Kyiv before issuing its proposal, CNN reported.

“Any proposal that can advance peace is something that’s worth looking at,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, according to Reuters. “But you know there are 12 points in the Chinese plan. If they were serious about the first one, sovereignty, then this war could end tomorrow.

“China has been trying to have it both ways: It’s on the one hand trying to present itself publicly as neutral and seeking peace, while at the same time it is talking up Russia’s false narrative about the war.”

Beijing issued its proposal February 24, 2023, the first anniversary of Moscow’s unprovoked invasion. Russia’s assault has killed tens of thousands of civilians and troops with forces accused of indiscriminate bombing of Ukrainian cities and other atrocities. (Pictured: Protesters hold a vigil near the Russian embassy in Seoul, South Korea, to mark the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.)

While much of the world has denounced Russia — with many nations imposing sweeping sanctions — the PRC has refused to do so, declining to call Putin’s war an invasion. Instead, Beijing has bolstered ties with Moscow, including deploying more than 2,000 troops as well as combat aircraft and warships to the Vostok 2022 military exercise in Russia.

Putin and Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping announced a “no limits” friendship between their nations just weeks before Russia attacked Ukraine, and security analysts suspect the PRC of secretly providing Moscow with technology critical to the Russian military.

“There is evidence that China is the biggest exporter of semiconductors — often through shell companies in Hong Kong and the UAE [United Arab Emirates] — to Russia,” Maria Shagina, an economic sanctions expert at the International Institute of Strategic Studies, told the BBC in late February 2023. “Some Chinese companies are also supplying civilian drones, exploiting the gray space between military and civilian purposes.”

A day before Beijing issued its proposal, NATO’s top official cautioned the PRC against arming Russia. “We haven’t seen any supplies of lethal aid from China to Russia, but we have seen signs that they are considering and may be planning for that,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told Reuters. “That’s the reason why the United States and other allies have been very clear, warning against that. And China should, of course, not support Russia’s illegal war.”

Russia issued a subdued response to the proposal, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying the details “should be the subject of careful analysis,” Newsweek magazine reported. “We treat the plan of our Chinese friends with such great attention,” Peskov said.

Given Beijing’s pattern of behavior, its belated proposal for ending the war will not erase widespread skepticism over its intentions, analysts say. “Overall, the position paper once again falls short of condemning the Russian invasion and instead displays several, if implicit, signs that China’s preferable outcome for this conflict is a Russian victory,” Giacomo Bruni and Ilaria Carrozza, researchers at Norway’s Peace Research Institute Oslo, wrote in a March 1, 2023, article for The Diplomat online news magazine.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskyy, tweeted that any plan that allows Russia to occupy any part of Ukraine “isn’t about peace, but about freezing the war, Ukraine’s defeat, next stages of Russian genocide,” the AP reported.

IMAGE CREDIT: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS