A \u201cwindow for peace is opening\u201d in Ukraine, China\u2019s top diplomat told a meeting of G20 foreign ministers on Thursday, as the Trump administration ramps up its push to end the war in close coordination with Russia. <\/p>\n
China\u2019s Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on the margins of the gathering in South Africa, the first high-level talks between the two close partners since US President Donald Trump upended America\u2019s stance on the conflict this month with a sweeping pivot toward Moscow. <\/p>\n
That\u2019s seen top Trump officials hold bilateral talks with Moscow over Kyiv\u2019s head and launch a barrage of criticism against Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, with a senior American official warning on Thursday that the US is losing patience with Kyiv. <\/p>\n
The G20 foreign ministers\u2019 meeting, which was not attended by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, came as the breakneck diplomacy has left Europe and China on the sidelines and raised questions about a shifting balance of power in a fraught geopolitical landscape. <\/p>\n
China \u201csupports all efforts dedicated to peace, including the recent consensus reached between the US and Russia,\u201d Wang told counterparts at the gathering in Johannesburg. <\/p>\n
A \u201cwindow for peace is opening\u201d on the war, he added. <\/p>\n
The war and US relations were among subjects discussed between the top Chinese diplomat and Lavrov on the meeting sidelines, a Russian readout said. The two sides \u2013 which have tightened their relations during the war \u2013 also praised their growing cooperation. <\/p>\n
On Ukraine, both countries appeared to agree that it was necessary to address the conflict\u2019s \u201croot causes\u201d \u2013 an apparent veiled reference to NATO \u2013 with Russia\u2019s readout attributing this sentiment to Wang and China\u2019s attributing this to Lavrov. <\/p>\n
Russia began its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago in an uninterrupted onslaught that has killed tens of thousands and displaced about 10 million people. The invasion has also laid waste to Ukrainian cities and drawn allegations of war crimes by Moscow\u2019s forces, which are entrenched in parts of eastern and southern Ukraine. <\/p>\n
Even though Russia invaded its neighbor, Beijing and Moscow have blamed NATO expansion as the cause of the conflict \u2013 part of their broader shared opposition to the US system of alliances they see as positioned against their interests. <\/p>\n
Lavrov earlier this week praised Trump for being what he described as \u201cthe first Western leader\u201d to acknowledge publicly that the \u201ccause of the Ukrainian conflict was the efforts \u2026 to expand NATO.\u201d <\/p>\n
Russia has long claimed that expansion of the US-led defense alliance put its security under threat, necessitating its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. That claim has been dismissed by Western leaders as a bogus justification for launching its war. <\/p>\n
The sharp shift in US positioning on the conflict was underscored Thursday as Trump\u2019s national security adviser Michael Waltz described the US president\u2019s \u201cfrustration\u201d with Zelensky following a meeting between the Ukrainian leader and the US\u2019 Russia-Ukraine envoy Keith Kellog in Kyiv. <\/p>\n
\u201cPresident Trump is obviously very frustrated right now with President Zelensky \u2014 the fact that \u2014 that he hasn\u2019t come to the table, that he hasn\u2019t been willing to take this opportunity that we have offered,\u201d Waltz told a news briefing in Washington, referencing an economic deal that the Trump administration has so far been unsuccessful in convincing Kyiv to accept. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think he eventually will get to that point, and I hope so very quickly,\u201d Waltz said, echoing comments he made before the Kellogg-Zelensky meeting, urging the Ukrainian leader to \u201csign the deal.\u201d <\/p>\n
Waltz\u2019s comments came amid what has been a deepening rift between Trump and Zelensky that has cast more uncertainty over how Ukraine\u2019s interests would be represented in future talks on ending the war. <\/p>\n
Trump ramped up his long-standing criticism of Ukraine\u2019s leader in recent days, parroting Kremlin rhetoric that wrongly accuses Kyiv of starting the war with Russia and questioning Zelensky\u2019s legitimacy to lead since he suspended an election due to the invasion. <\/p>\n
After Zelensky hit back, accusing the US president of being in a \u201cdisinformation space,\u201d Trump escalated the fight on Wednesday, calling Zelensky \u201ca Dictator without elections\u201d in a scathing post on his platform Truth Social. <\/p>\n
Following talks Thursday with envoy Kellogg, Zelensky appeared keen to stress Ukraine\u2019s interest in maintaining strong US relations. <\/p>\n
\u201cGeneral Kellogg\u2019s meeting is one that restores hope, and we need strong agreements with America, agreements that will really work,\u201d Zelensky said in his nightly address to the Ukrainian people. <\/p>\n
\u201cEconomy and security must always go hand in hand, and the details of the agreements matter: the better the details, the better the result.\u201d <\/p>\n
Kellogg and Zelensky\u2019s team had discussed Ukraine\u2019s prisoners of war, and \u201cthe need for a reliable and clear system of security guarantees so that the war does not return,\u201d the Ukrainian president added. <\/p>\n
The meeting followed a sit down earlier this month between Zelensky and US Vice President JD Vance on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich. <\/p>\n
In his comments Thursday, national security adviser Waltz defended Washington\u2019s \u201cshuttle diplomacy\u201d approach to speak with Russian and Ukrainian counterparts separately. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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