Zelensky hopes Beijing can use ‘influence’ over Moscow to help stop Ukraine war

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday that Beijing has “influence” over Moscow it should use to stop the war in Ukraine, and that a proposed summit meeting of the US, Chinese and Russian leaders must not lead to the division of his war-torn country.

Speaking virtually at an event hosted by Washington-based Hudson Institute think tank, Zelensky said he did not know what would be discussed at the potential meeting between US President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

However, Zelensky described China as a “strong” country with “influence” over Russia, one of its largest trade partners.

The meeting is set to be held on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) summit in Shenzhen, China on November 18-19. No details about the meeting have been made public.

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“We always supported the multilateral meetings,” Zelensky said, but addressed the possibility that the three might try to decide the nation’s fate without Kyiv being at the table.

“Nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine,” he added, referring to any peace deal to settle the four-and-a-half-year war. “[I] hope nobody will divide Ukraine, because it’s not simple for us. We need friends – not Russian friends.”

“We always said that [it’s] great if we can have [a] meeting with Russia, with mediation of the United States, with the support of Europe, and if China really wants to help, they can.”

The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that Putin floated the idea of three-way negotiations to end the Ukraine war at the Apec gathering during a phone call with the US president earlier this month, citing sources.

Trump responded on Monday that he was willing to meet with Putin and Xi but that his focus was on denuclearisation efforts between the three nuclear-armed states, not on ending the war in Ukraine.

Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha also rejected the idea of peace negotiations that did not include Kyiv in a social media post on Monday, saying it would “encourage Putin to continue his war” and that only a Ukraine-US-Russia trilateral meeting would end the war “sooner”.

Kyiv has refused to cede any of its pre-war territory and has demanded security guarantees as a condition for ending the war. Moscow, meanwhile, asserts that Ukraine must cede the eastern flank of its country, part of what is known as the Donbas region, which is currently split between Russia and Ukraine.

The Russian military has occupied much of it since the beginning of the war and has ruled out any short-term ceasefire without a final security framework.

During Friday’s event, Zelensky said that he had again spoken to US special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner right before his remarks at the Hudson Institute, following their meeting in Oslo on Tuesday.

Witkoff and Kushner agreed to hold trilateral talks between Kyiv, Washington and Moscow at a “team level” in the first half of November “as soon as possible”, Zelensky added, suggesting Abu Dhabi as a potential venue and adding that European nations can also be part of the conversation.

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According to Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov, after the meeting between the Russian president and Witkoff in St. Petersburg on Wednesday, Moscow had “in principle” agreed to resume trilateral negotiations with Washington and Kyiv after November 10 on ending the war in Ukraine.

In an interview with a Russian television station on Thursday, Putin also confirmed that he is ready to resume US-mediated talks with Ukraine next month. But Russia remained intent on ending the conflict rather than a short-lived ceasefire, he added, to “⁠ensure the security of Ukraine and Russia”.

The US, Ukraine and Russia have held three rounds of trilateral negotiations this year, meeting twice in Abu Dhabi in January and February, followed by further talks in Geneva in February. But no apparent progress has been made, with Russian and Ukrainian militaries deadlocked on the battlefield.

Zelensky also confirmed he was open to freezing the front lines in Ukraine.

That would be a “real way” to bring about a ceasefire in the long-running conflict, he added during an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, while highlighting the need to secure security guarantees from Washington and European allies.