Xi (finally) picks up the phone to Zelensky

China will send special representatives to Ukraine to hold talks aimed at resolving the war with Russia, President Xi told President Zelensky in a phone call today, the first contact between the two leaders since Russia invaded last year.

China’s state-run Xinhua news agency is reporting that Xi reassured Zelensky that the time was right to “resolve the crisis politically” and that Beijing would not add “fuel to the fire” of the war. Zelensky described the conversation as “long and meaningful.”

In response to the call, the Kremlin accused Kyiv of undermining peace attempts. Russia’s foreign ministry spokesman said: “The Ukrainian authorities and their Western minders have already shown their ability to mess up any peace initiatives.”

The conversation marks a change of tack for Xi. Until now, China has published a vague peace plan and made noises about the need for a diplomatic resolution to the war. Yet for months, Xi has resisted Western pressure to talk directly to Zelensky, who has repeatedly and publicly called for a chance to discuss the war with the Chinese premier. Xi chose instead to meet with President Putin in Moscow in March.

While the call may help ease tensions with the West over China’s stance on the conflict, it doesn’t change the big picture: Xi’s desire to team up with Russia to reshape the global order to America’s disadvantage.

Within the West, there are varying degrees of scepticism about whether to take China-as-Ukraine-peacemaker seriously. 

At one extreme, there are those such as Czech President and former senior NATO military chief, Petr Pavel, who warned this week that China cannot be trusted to mediate a resolution to the war.

“I believe that it is in China’s interest to prolong the status quo,” Pavel told POLITICO, “because it can push Russia to a number of concessions.” 

He suggested China can continue to get cheap oil and gas from Russia in exchange for its “no limits” partnership with the Kremlin while the war grinds on.

French President Emmanuel Macron, however, insists that China has an important role to play in Ukraine.

A French presidential official welcomed the Zelensky-Xi phone call, saying that the Elysée “encourages all dialogue” which can “contribute to a resolution of the conflict” in Ukraine that is “in line with the fundamental interests of Kyiv”.

Could Zelensky’s phone call with Xi have been the result of Macron’s sweet-talking in Beijing earlier this month? Perhaps. If so, the question then is what Macron offered in return.

If the answer is a softening on Taiwan, it would seem far too great a price to pay.

On a flight back from his state visit to Beijing, the French President said “the great risk” Europe faces is that it “gets caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy”. 

This has been widely interpreted as an oblique reference to Taiwan, the island democracy that Beijing claims as its own.

As Reaction’s Editorial Board notes, Macron embarking on freelance diplomacy with Beijing – and splitting the EU in the process – is the last thing the Western alliance needs.  

Write to us with your comments to be considered for publication at letters@reaction.life