Chinese officials and state media reacted with sputtering outrage after Ukrainian President Voldoymyr Zelensky said the Russia-allied communist tyranny was not welcome as part of the prospective coalition that will secure Ukraine’s postwar borders.
“Why isn’t China one of the security guarantors? We don’t need guarantors that don’t help Ukraine. Beijing assisted Russia by opening access to the drone market,” Zelensky said during a meeting with journalists on Thursday.
“We don’t need guarantors who don’t help Ukraine, and didn’t help Ukraine at the moment when we really needed it. We need security guarantees only from those countries that are ready to help us,” Zelensky said.
The possibility of Russia’s “no limits” partner and “forever friend” China participating in security guarantees was raised the previous day by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who sought to revive a 2022 proposal that would have involved the entire U.N. Security Council (UNSC) in providing security for Ukraine. Russia and China are both permanent members of UNSC.
Ukraine rejected the 2022 proposal because it would have given Russia too much control over Ukraine’s security. Kyiv is unlikely to look more kindly upon the proposal after three years of brutal warfare – but Lavrov said Moscow will insist on having Russian, and possibly Chinese, troops working alongside any European security force.
“Russia agrees that security guarantees for Ukraine be provided on an equal basis with the participation of countries such as China, the USA, Britain, and France,” he said.
Lavrov said on Thursday that any plan which deviates from the rejected 2022 proposal “is of course an absolutely futile undertaking.”
For their part, the Chinese were breathless with outrage at Zelensky for rejecting their participation in a security deal. China’s state-run Global Times was so upset that it vomited a single sentence that lasted for an entire paragraph:
In response to a media inquiry that the Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia supports providing strong security guarantees for Ukraine, and does not rule out Security Council members, including Western countries and China, offering such guarantees, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that Ukraine does not need China as one of the countries providing security guarantees, arguing that China did not help prevent the conflict in 2022 and took no action when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said that China has always been open and aboveboard on the Ukraine crisis, upholding an objective and just position, and relevant parties are well aware of this.
“It is essential to pursue common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security and promote the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis. China stands ready to play a constructive role to that end,” Mao Ning insisted in her Friday press briefing.
“China did not create the Ukraine crisis, nor is China a party to it. Even so, China has since day one held an objective and fair position and promoted talks for peace,” Chinese embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu told Fox News Digital on Thursday.
“China stands ready to, in light of the will of the parties concerned and together with the rest of the international community, continue playing a constructive role for the political settlement of the crisis,” he said.
As Zelensky pointed out, China has played no meaningful role in ending the war. Beijing has never denounced the Russian invasion. Its sole contribution to date has been preparing an absurdly vague 12-point “peace plan” that not even the Russians pretended to take seriously.
The Chinese plan did not identify Russia as the aggressor, and failed to call on Russia to withdraw from any of the territory it occupied. The only thing China condemned was the use of economic sanctions by the United States and Europe to pressure Russia into ending the war.
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