Washington urges China’s Xi Jinping to contact President Zelenskyy in Kyiv

Chinese President Xi Jinping has been urged to contact President Zelenskyy in Kyiv by officials in Washington.

During a press briefing this Monday, March 13, by US national security adviser Jake Sullivan, he announced that the leadership of the US administration urged the Chinese President Xi Jinping to have direct contact with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“Regarding the report of a potential call from President Xi to President Zelenskyy, we urged President Xi to contact President Zelenskyy as we believe that the PRC and President Xi personally need to hear directly from Ukraine its views on the crisis, not only from Russia. So we really convinced Beijing to make such a contact. We did it both publicly and privately”, he revealed.

At the same time, he clarified that Washington is currently unable to confirm the publication in The Wall Street Journal that Xi Jinping expects to visit Moscow next week and meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and then hold online talks with Zelenskyy. 

“We spoke today with our Ukrainian colleagues, I saw the publication in The Wall Street Journal. Ukrainian officials have not really received any confirmation yet that the phone call or video conference will take place”, Sullivan continued.

According to him, the US government hopes that such contact will still take place. “That would be a good development,” the White House official said. Sullivan said he believed this would help balance Beijing’s views on the crisis around Ukraine.

In addition, Washington hoped that this would help convince the PRC to refuse the possible supply of weapons and military equipment to Russia for use in the course of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, Sullivan added, as reported by tass.ru.

Earlier, the Reuters news agency, citing sources, reported that Xi Jinping hoped to visit Moscow next week and meet with Putin. Dmitry Peskov, the Press Secretary of the President of Russia did not say whether the President of the PRC could really visit Moscow on the mentioned dates. He promised to inform about this when there was a mutual readiness between the two parties.

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