Germany in New Push to Get China Behind Ukraine Peace Efforts
BERLIN—German Chancellor Olaf Scholz plans to urge Chinese leader Xi Jinping to scale back economic support China is giving Russia and to pressure Moscow to take part in peace talks on Ukraine, with the aim of settling the conflict on terms acceptable to Kyiv, German officials said.
A negotiated end to the conflict, now in its third year, is unlikely in the near term. Kyiv has said it would accept nothing short of a complete Russian withdrawal and reparations. Moscow says it expects to keep large chunks of Ukrainian territory that its armed forces now occupy. Western officials say Russia could be preparing a new offensive in late spring and summer.
“We want to make it clear to China that this war is illegal and that it infringes on our core interests,” a senior German official said. “Right now China is on the side of the aggressor…It should participate actively in all diplomatic efforts to end the war.”
Scholz is on a three-day, three-city tour of China and is scheduled to meet Xion Tuesday.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Russian troops are on the move in Ukraine now, pushing against Ukrainian defenses, though gains so far have been incremental and come at a high cost in men and materiel. German officials say a reduction in China’s support could be decisive in bringing Moscow to the negotiating table.
Many Western politicians and analysts believe Russian President Vladimir Putin hopes to make more territorial gains in Ukraine and won’t negotiate before the U.S. election in November. Some Western allies such as Britain are hesitant about leaning on Ukraine to engage in talks directly with Russia, fearing that Russia’s goal remains to replace the government in Kyiv with a leadership more pliant to the Kremlin’s demands.
In February, Putin told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson the West—not Kyiv—should negotiate with Moscow to end the Ukraine war. On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said a draft peace agreement put forward by Russia in March 2022 should be the basis for new talks to stop the fighting.
Still, while Russia now has the upper hand, the front line hasn’t shifted markedly in months and there is little prospect of one side scoring a decisive military victory over the other soon. This and the spiraling costs of the war make it likely that its end will have to be negotiated sooner or later.
The West has failed in the past to secure Chinese backing for a diplomatic solution. While Beijing isn’t believed to be directly supplying Moscow with weapons, Western officials said Chinese companies are supplying dual-use goods, such as electronic parts and chemicals that are key components of weapons and are helping Russia maintain and rebuild its military.
China is providing economic backing for Putin’s war, and it is therefore crucial to get it behind any serious effort to end the aggression, said Fabrice Pothier, former senior NATO official who now advises the Kyiv government. Pothier said only full NATO membership for Ukraine could secure a lasting peace, rather than Putin’s demand of “neutrality.”
“The important thing is for Scholz to be clear that any scenario involving some neutrality for Ukraine isn’t a workable option, not so much for the Ukrainians as for Putin, who doesn’t accept the very idea of Ukrainian sovereignty,” Pothier said.
After China made a series of overtures to countries in Europe, signaling a desire to re-engage economically after the hiatus of the Covid-19 pandemic, there is now hope among some Western governments that, with China’s backing, negotiations involving Russia could begin before the end of the year, according to several Western official.
Chinese diplomats have sounded out both Ukrainian and Russian officials in recent months about the possibility of restarting peace talks, as has Turkey, which has also offered to host potential negotiations, according to officials from several countries. Earlier talks between Kyiv and Moscow that broke down in the summer of 2022 were largely held in Istanbul.
Ukraine later set up a forum known as the Peace Summit with non-Western nations, including several such as China, India and Saudi Arabia that have good relations with Russia. Members have held talks for nearly a year, though China only attended one meeting and Moscow hasn’t yet been invited.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a recent interview that diplomats from the nations participating in the summit could soon present a peace plan to Russia. Zelensky has said that he will only negotiate with Russia in a forum that includes Xi, and that China must be a guarantor of any potential agreement, according to people familiar with past talks.
The U.S. government recently said China had stepped up supplies of nonlethal aid that can be used for weapons manufacturing to Russia. But German officials say that China’s refusal to provide Moscow with any weapons or ammunition two years into the war shows Beijing is keeping its options open and could yet be swayed to lean on Putin.
“China is still walking a thin line,” one senior official said.
Notably, China hasn’t moved to finish the expansion of a pipeline for importing Russian natural gas that is in the early stages of construction, even as Russia desperately seeks new buyers for the gas it is no longer selling to Europe. One senior Kremlin official who recently visited Beijing said the Chinese government was stalling to preserve leverage over Putin so it could pressure him to end the war should it become too disruptive to its economy.
Several people close to the Kremlin have in recent months begun back channel work to try to restart negotiations using the failed peace talks from 2022 as a baseline for an eventual deal. During those talks, Russia proposed to retreat from some Ukrainian territory in return for Ukraine limiting the size of its army and being barred from receiving Western military aid.
Chinese diplomats have in recent months been talking to senior officials in Ukraine, Russia and the West about possible negotiations, including during visits in early March. This approach has met with skepticism by most Western governments because the officials were junior diplomats and didn’t appear to carry a clear mandate from Xi.
Xi, who talks regularly with Putin, has spoken just once to Zelensky since the war began, and has so far refused Ukrainian requests for a meeting.
Ambassador Li Hui, special representative for Euroasian Affairs, headed the Chinese delegation to Kyiv, where he was given the cold shoulder by Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak, according to people familiar with the talks. Yermak held a brief presentation to his Chinese guest showing evidence that Chinese components had been found in weapons such as drones that Russia uses to attack Ukraine.
