Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba indicated during a visit to the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou that Kyiv was ready to enter into talks with Moscow over Ukraine, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.
“The Ukrainians are ready for dialogue and negotiations with their Russian counterparts as long as negotiations should be reasonable and substantive, aimed at achieving a just and lasting peace,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry quoted Kuleba as saying.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry later issued a statement clarifying Kuleba’s remarks, stressing that Ukraine would be “ready to engage the Russian side in the negotiation process at a certain stage, when Russia is ready to negotiate in good faith, but emphasised that no such readiness is currently observed on the Russian side”.
Kuleba and his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, spoke for more than three hours during Kuleba’s first visit to the country since Russia invaded Ukraine, Reuters reported, adding that one member of the Ukrainian delegation told the news agency that the pair’s “very deep and concrete conversation” had gone on longer than planned.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has also recently hinted at a willingness to hold peace talks with Russia, CNN reported on Saturday.
The US Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst said it was plausible that Zelensky’s recent shift in tone was a reaction to former US president Donald Trump’s pick of JD Vance, a fierce critic of ongoing US military support for Ukraine, to be his running mate.
Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, told CNN that Trump’s peace plan would “lead to concessions to the Russian side that are going to be devastating for Ukraine”.
Vladimir Putin has signalled that he is ready to negotiate with Ukraine, while also setting preconditions that would involve Kyiv ceding more of its territory to Russia than it has already lost in over two years of war. Zelensky has nevertheless suggested that Moscow send a delegation to the next peace summit for Ukraine, which is scheduled to take place in November.