China calls for more support for its Ukraine peace plan created with Brazil

BANGKOK: China called on Tuesday for more countries to endorse its peace plan for Ukraine, after a round of diplomacy with Indonesia, Brazil and South Africa to support its plan.

Envoy Li Hui called the three countries representative of the Global South and “important forces in promoting world peace" who share similar positions with China. "They have maintained communication with both Russia and Ukraine and stay committed to a political settlement to the crisis through dialogue and negotiation,” said Li, China's special envoy for Eurasian affairs.

China and Brazil issued a joint peace plan earlier this year that calls for a peace conference with both Ukraine and Russia and no expansion of the battlefield. China and Russia were absent from a peace summit hosted in Switzerland in June. Russia was not invited while China chose not to attend.

Initially, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said China had pressured other countries to not attend the peace summit. But since then, Ukraine has recognized China's role in a peace process, given its close relationship with Russia, with the Ukrainian foreign minister paying a visit to the country in July, the first since the war began.

While a diplomatic dialogue between Russia and Ukraine so far appears out of reach, the war has shifted.

In August Ukraine opened a new front in the war by attacking the Russian oblast of Kursk, in a surprise move that made clear Russia was also vulnerable. Zelenskyy has said the aim was to create a buffer zone to protect Ukraine from attacks.

Li noted the incursion and criticized Western support for Ukraine. “All sides are worried that the West continues to relax conditions for Ukraine to strike the Russian territory with aided weapons,” Li said. “And recent developments on the battlefield confirmed these kind of worries.”

The US and NATO have called China an enabler of Russia in the war. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg then said China provides equipment, microelectronics and tools that are “enabling Russia to build the missiles, to build the bombs, to build the aircraft, to build the weapons they use to attack Ukraine.”

Just last week, the US expanded sanction s to cover more Chinese firms that trade with Russia.