Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday that he is “satisfied” with China’s policy of non-interference against the invasion launched by its ally Russia.
Zelensky said he desires closer relations with China even though it has done nothing to protect his country from the devastating Russian assault.
“China has chosen the policy of staying away. At the moment, Ukraine is satisfied with this policy. It is better than helping the Russian Federation in any case. And I want to believe that China will not pursue another policy. We are satisfied with this status quo, to be honest,” Zelensky said in a breakfast video conference hosted in Davos, Switzerland, where the World Economic Forum (WEF) is currently in progress.
“Although there is a rather good and long history between the countries [Ukraine and China]. Therefore, I would like to have an advantage in these relations compared to Russia,” Zelensky added, according to Ukraine’s state Ukrinform news service.
In this photo released by China’s Xinhua News Agency, Chinese president Xi Jinping delivers a speech via video link on Thursday, April 21, 2022. (Huang Jingwen/Xinhua via AP)
Ukrinform suggested Zelensky was prepared to give China a pass because it was Ukraine’s largest trading partner before the war.
Zelensky’s address to the WEF on Monday included a plea for more countries to invest in Ukraine, even as he called for a “complete withdrawal of foreign businesses” from Russia.
Iryna Martsyniuk, 50, stands next to her house, heavily damaged after a Russian bombing in Velyka Kostromka village, Ukraine, Thursday, May 19, 2022. Martsyniuk and her three young children were at home when the attack occurred in the village, a few kilometres from the front lines, but they all survived unharmed. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
“It is necessary to set a precedent so that your brands will not be associated with war crimes. We offer every company that leaves the Russian market to continue operating in Ukraine,” he told the WEF.
Zelensky also asked the rest of the world to break Russia’s blockades on Ukrainian shipping, so that Ukrainian agricultural products could help stave off a global food crisis. It was not clear from his address why China should not be expected to assist with this desperate effort to stave off worldwide starvation, or why China should not be concerned about trading with aggressors and war criminals.
Zelensky requested more “weapons, funding, political support, and sanctions against Russia” from everyone except China, noting that “support to the country under attack is more valuable the sooner it is provided.”
“If we would have received them by 100% of our needs at once back in February, the result would have been tens of thousands of lives saved. This is why Ukraine needs all the weapons that we ask for, not just the ones that have been provided,” he said.
One of the specific sanctions Zelensky called for was an oil embargo on Russia. China is currently buying huge volumes of oil from Russia at discount prices, taking up much of the slack from Western customers who stopped dealing with Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.
The Chinese actually cut back their Russian oil purchases last month because they feared the political embarrassment, and possible sanctions repercussions, from openly supporting the Russian economy, but Beijing is ravenous for fossil fuels, so it began ramping up its Russian oil trade again in May.
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