Has Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy finally realized that his war aims are unrealistic and that it's time to stop the killing?
Zelenskyy has maintained since the start of the war that Ukraine won't end the conflict until it gains back every inch of territory that Russia has taken. That includes Crimea, which now has tens of thousands of Russian troops stationed there and fortifications that Ukraine failed to breach last summer.
Zelenskyy is going to receive much less than that, depending on how his troops perform this summer. The Russians are moving slowly on Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city. Ukraine's armed forces retook Kharkiv in the first spring of the war, and losing it again would be a huge blow to Ukraine's war effort.
The war has devolved into trading drone strikes with occasional Russian attacks on Ukraine's electrical infrastructure and ground assaults mostly by Russia that gain very little ground but add considerably to the war's butcher's bill.
Even Zelenskyy must realize that the time to negotiate is now while he can still claim to have fought Moscow to a standstill. And that's where China comes in.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba met with China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Guangzhou in Beijing on Wednesday, sounding out the Chinese about acting as a go-between with Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was the first high-level diplomatic contract between the two countries since the war began and comes at a critical time for Ukraine.
Kyiv is slowly losing the war. Zelenskyy may not be willing to negotiate until he starts losing faster. That might happen by the end of the summer. Russia's unrelenting assault on Ukraine's electrical grid may eventually pay big dividends for Moscow by forcing Ukraine to recognize reality and come to the bargaining table with a less ambitious agenda.
Could China be an "honest broker" and bring about a cease-fire?
Beijing has increasingly sought to portray itself as a global peacemaker. This week, it also hosted a meeting of Palestinian rival factions including Hamas and Fatah, which have been estranged for years. Representatives of the 14 groups signed an agreement to work toward unity and establish an interim reconciliation government, but with few details on how that would happen. China has called for a cease-fire in Ukraine and issued a statement with Brazil in May on resolving the war. Russia describes its war on Ukraine as a “special military operation” and China also only refers to it as a “crisis”—a description Wang continued to use Wednesday.
“The best Ukraine can hope for is a patching up of relations with China,” said Lucian Kim, a senior Ukraine analyst at the International Crisis Group. “China has already indicated which side it’s backing.”
That would be the first step in making it to the negotiating table.
“China believes that all conflicts must be resolved by returning to the negotiating table and that all disputes must be resolved through political means,” Wang Yi said. “Recently, the Russian and Ukrainian sides have, to varying degrees, signaled their willingness to negotiate.”
Last month in Singapore, Zelenskyy expressed his anger at China, accusing Beijing of lobbying other nations to avoid the peace conference taking place in Switzerland. The peace conference was a bust anyway because Russia refused to attend as well.
But that criticism is in the past. Kuleba sounded hopeful about China's assistance with negotiations.
“We need to move to a just and stable peace,” he said, according to a translation from Euromaiden Press, an English-language news site on Ukraine. “China can play a significant role in this. Let’s go.”
A Chinese Foreign Ministry statement on the meeting quoted Wang saying that four principles previously outlined by Chinese President Xi Jinping provide important guidelines for resolving the crisis.
One of the principles says that “all countries deserve respect for their sovereignty and territorial integrity” but another says that “the legitimate security concerns of any party should be taken seriously” — a reference to Russia’s opposition to NATO expansion.
If Ukraine ever joins NATO, it will be a World War waiting to happen. The 104th most corrupt country in the world isn't a good fit for NATO, and its entry should wait until it cleans up its act domestically.
