Ukraine’s Volodymr Zelensky says he has had a “long and meaningful” phone call with China’s Xi Jinping, their first contact since Russia’s war began.
He said on Twitter he believed the call, along with the appointment of an ambassador to Beijing, would “give a powerful impetus to the development of our bilateral relations”.
China confirmed the call, adding that it “always stood on the side of peace”.
Until now, Beijing has sought to show a neutral stance on the Russian invasion.
But it has never condemned the invasion and last month President Xi paid a two-day state visit to Russia.
He referred to President Vladimir Putin as his “dear friend”, proposed a vague 12-point peace plan and insisted that China stood on the right side of history. However, he made no commitment to providing Russia with weapons.
Within days of the visit, President Zelensky invited the Chinese leader to visit Kyiv for talks, noting that they had had contact before the full-scale war but nothing since it began in February 2022.
In a readout of Wednesday’s phone call, China’s CCTV quoted President Xi as saying that China would “neither watch the fire from the other side, nor add fuel to the fire, let alone take advantage of the crisis to profit”.
