Ukrainian president unleashes on Beijing, saying it’s helping Moscow threaten countries with higher food and fuel prices to convince them not to attend June 15-16 meeting.
June 2, 2024
By ZOYA SHEFTALOVICH, SUZANNE LYNCH and STUART LAU
POLITICO
SINGAPORE — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hit out at China, accusing the country of helping Russia derail a peace summit this month in Switzerland.
“Russia, using Chinese influence on the region, using Chinese diplomats also, does everything to disrupt the peace summit,” Zelenskyy said Sunday during a press conference after delivering an address at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.
In a rare public rebuke of China — after years of careful attempts to court Beijing and peel it away from its “no limits” friendship with Russia — Zelenskyy’s frustration appeared to boil over in Singapore. He said Ukraine had evidence that China was assisting Moscow’s war efforts, despite the fact that Chinese President Xi Jinping had promised him in a phone call a year ago that Beijing would not get involved.
“We do not expect military support from China. We have never asked them. But we do not expect China to provide defense support to Russia,” Zelenskyy said. “That is what we discussed with the Chinese leader by phone. He promised me China would stand aside, would not support Russia with weapons. Today, there is intelligence that somehow, some way, some things come to Russia’s markets via China, elements of Russia’s weaponry come from China.”
Earlier Sunday, China’s Defense Minister Dong Jun had insisted that Beijing wasn’t fueling Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war effort.
China “has not provided weapons to either side, and has strict control over exports of dual-use goods,” Dong said during his own speech at the Shangri-La summit. “We stand firmly on the side of peace and dialogue.”
It comes after the second most senior figure in the U.S. State Department, Kurt Campbell, told media outlets including POLITICO last week: “It is fair to say that China’s general goal has been not only to support Russia — in our view, to the hilt — but to downplay that publicly and try to maintain normal diplomatic and commercial ties with Europe.”
Zelenskyy also accused China of refusing to meet with Ukraine.
“Many times we have wanted to meet Chinese representatives,” including Xi, he said. “Unfortunately, Ukraine does not have any powerful connections with China because China does not want it.”
He confirmed he had not met with any Chinese officials while in Singapore.
Earlier, on the Shangri-La main stage, Zelenskyy called on Asia-Pacific countries to show their commitment to peace by attending the June 15-16 summit in Switzerland.
“I urge your leaders to join,” an impassioned Zelenskyy said. “By uniting against one war, we create for the world the real experience of overcoming any war, and of diplomacy that does work.”
Zelenskyy said 106 countries had so far confirmed they would send representatives to the Swiss summit, but added that the Kremlin and some of its allies — one of which he later identified as China — have been pressuring others not to attend.
“Russia is trying to disrupt the peace summit,” Zelenskyy said. “What Russia is doing is now traveling around many countries in the world and threatening them with the blockade of agricultural goods, of food products; it is threatening to increase prices for energy, and it is pushing countries around the world so they are not present at the summit.”
He added: “And now there is information that certain states are assisting it.”
China has opted not to send a delegation to the Swiss summit, saying it would not attend because Russia wasn’t invited. Instead, Beijing has floated the idea of hosting its own peace conference with both Russia and Ukraine to be represented. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov indicated last week that Moscow would be amenable to that idea.
Asked during the press conference Sunday whether Ukraine would attend China’s proposed summit, Zelenskyy said it was not Beijing’s place to call such a meeting.
“Ukraine is the victim of the war. It is us who have to initiate everything. Nobody else is fully aware of what Russia has brought with this war to our state,” he said. “It is Ukrainians who have died, Russians were raping our women, they have stolen tens of thousands of our children. No one else has the right to dictate how this war should end.”
Earlier, during his public remarks, Zelenskyy said it was important for as many of the world’s leaders as possible to travel to Switzerland so that “the global majority” can agree “on the common understandings and steps” to help end the war in Ukraine, now in its third year after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.
“The relevant parties will pass this to Russia, aiming for an outcome similar to the grain initiative,” Zelenskyy added, referring to the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which was brokered by the U.N. and Turkey to allow Ukrainian grain exports to flow.
Zelenskyy, who has been criss-crossing the world in an effort to convince leaders to travel to Switzerland later this month, said he wanted to discuss three topics there: nuclear security, food security and the release of prisoners of war as well as the Ukrainian children who have been abducted by Russia.
Zelenskyy said he was “disappointed some world leaders have not yet confirmed their participation” at the Swiss summit. U.S. President Joe Biden, who is facing an election in
November, has not confirmed his attendance, though he will be present at the G7 summit in Italy which takes place just before the Swiss gathering.
Zelenskyy held a series of meetings in Singapore, including with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, members of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, Timor-Leste’s President José Ramos-Horta and Indonesia’s President-elect Prabowo Subianto. Zelenskyy said in a statement in the early hours of Sunday that he had invited both Ramos-Horta and Prabowo to Switzerland, with the former accepting the invitation.
“Time is running out, and the children are growing up in their Putin-land, where they are taught to hate their homeland, and are lied to, being told they have no families while their loved ones wait for them at home in Ukraine,” the Ukrainian president said on stage in Singapore, addressing the audience in English.
“I’m here to state that we’ve found a way to restore diplomacy,” said Zelenskyy in his speech. “We can make it real. Not so long ago, it seemed that the world would always be fragmented, but we showed that nations are capable of cooperation.”
Noting that nearly 100 Russian missiles and drones had hit Ukraine overnight, Zelenskyy said: “No country could handle these alone. Everyone in the world who helps us with air defense systems, thank you so much.” He name-checked the United States, the Netherlands and Germany.
“Putin believes he is allowed to do anything. By the mid-2010s, Russia brought a war to our lands, a war that Ukraine never, never wanted, did not provoke,” Zelenskyy said.
Sitting in the front row for Zelenskyy’s speech were Austin and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, as well as multiple European defense ministers. The Singaporean and Malaysian defense chiefs were on stage as Zelenskyy spoke.