Chinese President Xi Speaks To Zelenskyy On Phone-MoFA

Hua Chunying, China's Assistant Minister of Foreign Affairs, tweets: "President Xi Jinping just spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the phone." This would be the first direct contact between the leaders of China and Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion in Feb 2022.

• While there has been criticism of China's peace plan for Ukraine in the West, the Zelenskyy administration has reiterated its view that China has an important role to play in any process of halting the war.
• Beijing has gone to great lengths to row back on comments from its ambassador to France Lu Shaye, who over the weekend stated on a TV interview that "Even these former Soviet countries don't have an effective status under international law because there is no international agreement under international law to concretise their status as sovereign countries," drawing major criticism from the EU and in particular its former Soviet member states.