China said Friday it would be ‘difficult’ for it to take part in a planned conference on the war in Ukraine next month if Russia did not attend.
While China says it is a neutral party in the Ukraine conflict, it has been criticised for refusing to condemn Moscow for its offensive.
Ukraine is trying to whip up attendance at the June peace conference in Switzerland, where it hopes to win broad international backing for its vision of the terms needed to end Russia’s war.
While President Volodymyr Zelensky has urged China to take part, Beijing insisted on Friday that any summit would need the participation of Russia, which Ukraine has rejected.
Beijing believes the conference ‘should have the recognition of Russia and Ukraine, equal participation of all parties and fair discussion of all peace plans,’ foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said.
‘Otherwise, it is difficult for the conference to play a substantive role in restoring peace,’ she added.
‘The arrangement of the meeting still falls short of China’s requirements and the expectations of the international community, making it difficult for China to attend,’ Mao said.
Moscow has dismissed the idea of a peace summit without Russia as ‘absurd’.
On the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore Friday, China’s top defence official reiterated Beijing’s ‘objective, impartial position’ on the war, according to a spokesman.
‘We have honoured our commitment not to provide weapons to either side of the conflict,’ spokesman Wu Qian said, following the rare meeting between US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and China’s Dong Jun.
‘We have implemented strict controls on exports of military items,’ Wu said.
‘China will continue resolutely to promote peace talks and play a constructive role, but we firmly oppose the United States shifting blame onto us,’ he added.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg on Friday called on members to commit to keeping annual military aid for Ukraine at a minimum of 40 billion euros ($43 billion), after alliance foreign ministers debated long-term support for Kyiv.
‘Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, allies have provided approximately 40 billion euros worth of military aid to Ukraine each year. We must maintain at least this level of support each year, for as long as necessary,’ Stoltenberg told journalists.
On the war front, Ukrainian shelling killed three people in the Russian-occupied town of Staromykhailivka in the eastern Donetsk region on Friday, Russian news agency TASS reported, citing proxy officials.
‘In the town of Staromykhailivka on Ivan Marchenko Street, two women, born in 1988 and 1948, and a man, born in 1985, died,’ TASS cited the Russian-installed authorities as saying.
NATO allies are alarmed and will respond to a rising campaign of hybrid attacks against them by Russia, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday.
Speaking after two days of talks in Prague among NATO foreign ministers, Blinken said: ‘Virtually every ally was seized with this intensification of Russia’s hybrid attacks.
‘We know what they’re up to, and we will respond both individually and collectively as necessary,’ Blinken told reporters.
Blinken pointed to a series of incidents short of military strikes against the 32-member transatlantic alliance, which considers an attack on one an attack on all.
Russia last week removed buoys demarcating the border with Estonia in the River Narva.
Blinken also pointed to incidents inside NATO of ‘setting fire and sabotaging supply warehouses’ as well as growing cyber attacks and disinformation campaigns attributed to Russia.
Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna this week told AFP that Russia was ‘pushing the limits and also playing with our fears’.
NATO earlier this month condemned Russian ‘malign activities’ on its territory, saying actions like disinformation, sabotage, violence and cyberinterference threatened the alliance’s security.
Authorities in the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Britain have recently investigated and charged people in connection with ‘hostile state activity’.
The incidents come as Russia mounts an offensive in northeastern Ukraine, scoring battlefield victories more than two years into its invasion.
Blinken confirmed that President Joe Biden has approved Ukrainian requests to use US weapons to strike Russian forces involved in the offensive even if they are immediately across the border.
The top US diplomat repeated his warning that a victory by Russia would embolden not only Moscow but other ‘would-be aggressors’.
‘We know that if Russia’s aggression is allowed to proceed in Ukraine with impunity, it will not stop with Ukraine,’ Blinken said.
Russia and Ukraine announced on Friday they had exchanged dozens of prisoners of war, in one of the only areas of dialogue between the warring countries.
Despite full-scale hostilities, the two sides have carried out more than 50 prisoner exchanges since Russia launched its offensive on Ukraine more than two years ago.
Recent swaps have been hampered by claims of unfair demands from both sides and after Moscow and Kyiv accused each other of shooting down a plane in Russia in January delivering Ukrainian prisoners to an exchange point.
‘Today we have an important result -- 75 more of our people have returned to Ukraine,’ President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media.
He posted images showing the returned servicemen draped in Ukrainian flags and being greeted by family members holding blue and yellow flowers.
The Russian defence ministry said it had secured the release of 75 of its military personnel, whom it claimed were ‘in mortal danger’ in detention in Ukraine.
Moscow also confirmed it had returned 75 Ukrainian servicemen to Kyiv and said that the United Arab Emirates mediated the exchange, as had been the case with previous swaps.