Global Courant 2023-05-15 09:19:11
Li Hui, who speaks fluent Russian, is the highest-ranking Chinese official to visit Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
A top Chinese envoy embarks on a tour of Europe that will take him first to Ukraine and finally to Russia, on a trip Beijing says is aimed at discussing a “political solution” to the Ukraine crisis.
Li Hui, China’s special representative for Eurasian affairs since 2019 and former ambassador to Russia, will also visit Poland, France and Germany on the multi-day trip, the foreign ministry announced last week, “for in-depth communication with various parties for a political settlement of the Ukraine crisis”.
Li, who speaks fluent Russian, is the highest-ranking Chinese official to visit Ukraine since Russia began its full-scale invasion in February 2022. by Russia.
The visit comes after Chinese President Xi Jinping had a phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy late last month, the first known wartime conversation between the two leaders.
Zelenskyy described the hour-long talk as “long and meaningful”, while Xi said China’s “core position is to promote peace through talks”.
On the first anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion, China issued a 12-point peace proposal – China’s position on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis – which was met with some skepticism in Western capitals given Beijing’s ties to Russia. It urged “both sides” to agree to a gradual de-escalation and abandon the “Cold War mentality”.
Beijing has not explicitly condemned Moscow for the invasion, which took place less than three weeks after the two countries committed to a borderless partnership. In March, Xi traveled to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin as the two men signed an agreement to take the relationship between their two countries into a “new era”.
Li has spent his entire diplomatic career dealing with the Soviet Union, Russia and the post-fall states since joining the State Department’s Department of Soviet and Eastern European Affairs in 1975.
Since Xi-Zelenskyy’s call, several European leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, have traveled to Beijing to urge China to take a more active role in curbing Moscow’s actions.
Kiev has ruled out the idea of any territorial concessions to Russia and has said it wants every inch of its land back. Russia invaded and then annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014 – a move widely condemned at the time – and announced last September that it had annexed four other eastern Ukrainian regions.
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