China will not participate in the peace conference on Ukraine in Switzerland next month because it does not meet its expectations, namely that Ukraine and Russia be invited to the forum, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said today, Reuters reported.
Switzerland is seeking a broad participation of countries from different parts of the world for the summit in mid-June, which Bern hopes will lay the foundations for a peace process in Ukraine.
Russia, which was not invited, described the talks as meaningless without its participation.
“The arrangements for the meeting still fall far short of China’s demands and the general expectations of the international community, which makes it difficult for China to participate,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning told a briefing.
“China has always insisted that the holding of an international peace conference should be supported by both Russia and Ukraine, with equal participation of all parties, and that all peace proposals should be discussed in a fair and equal manner. Otherwise for her [конференцията – бел. ред.] it will be difficult to play a significant role in restoring peace,” Mao said.
China informed some diplomats this week that it had declined the invitation, saying its conditions had not been met, four sources told Reuters earlier.
“We very much regret that the Chinese side did not use the opportunity to present its position on the platform of the summit in Switzerland,” a spokesman for the Ukrainian embassy in Beijing said in a statement to Reuters.
Yesterday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov admitted that China could organize a peace conference in which both Russia and Ukraine would participate.
The Kremlin said today that Moscow supported China’s refusal to participate in next month’s Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland because it was pointless to hold such an event without Russia’s participation, Reuters reported.
The talks were convened at the initiative of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who said that Russian President Vladimir Putin should not attend.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that China’s decision showed that Beijing understood that holding such an event without Russia would be pointless.
“From the very beginning, China has been talking about the absolute futility of holding such formats without Russia,” Peskov said. “Looking for a way out of the situation in Ukraine without the participation of Russia is absolutely illogical, useless and a waste of time,” he added.
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