(Reuters) – Russian president Vladimir Putinin an interview published on Wednesday morning, he said he supported China’s plan for a peaceful resolution of the crisis in Ukraine, saying Beijing had full understanding of what was behind the crisis.
Putin, speaking to Chinese news agency Xinhua ahead of his visit to Beijing this week, said Russia remained open to dialogue and negotiations to resolve the more than two-year-old conflict.
China’s plan and other “principles” made public 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 on the Kremlin website. “In Beijing, they really understand its root causes and its global geopolitical significance.”
And the additional principles, laid out by Xi in talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, were “realistic and constructive steps” 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.
At the time, it received a lukewarm reception in both Russia and Ukraine, while the US claimed that 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 for discussion.”
Xi’s additional principles call for a “cooling down” of the situation, conditions to restore peace and create stability and minimize impacts on the world economy.
Russia sees the conflict as a struggle that pits it against the “collective West” which has failed to take into account Moscow’s security concerns, promoting NATO’s eastward expansion and military activity close to its borders.
Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation” to disarm Ukraine and protect it from fascists. Ukraine and the West say the fascist allegation is baseless and that the war is an unprovoked act of aggression.
Russia and China proclaimed a “boundless” relationship just days before Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, but Beijing has so far avoided supplying live weapons and ammunition to Russia’s war effort.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s peace plan calls for the withdrawal of Russian troops, the restoration of 1991 post-Soviet borders and holding Russia accountable for its actions.
A “peace summit” is scheduled for June in Switzerland. But Russia is not invited, considers the initiative meaningless and says that the talks must take into account “new realities”.
China participated in some preparatory talks for the summit and Ukraine made great efforts to persuade it to participate.
(Reporting by Ron Popeski in Winnipeg; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
