Comment by Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on China's Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis

A document entitled, China's Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis, was published on the official website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China on February 24.

We highly value the aspiration of our Chinese friends to contribute to a settlement of the conflict in Ukraine through peaceful means.

We share the views of China. We are committed to complying with the principles of the UN Charter and the provisions of international law, including humanitarian law and indivisibility of security, which says the security of one country cannot be increased to the detriment of the security of another country, which also applies to the security of separate groups of countries. Like our Chinese colleagues, we find any restrictive measures, that are not authorised by the UN Security Council, illegitimate. This is a crude tool for unfair competition and economic war.

Our proposals, brought up in late 2021, in the treaty between the Russian Federation and the United States of America on Security Guarantees and the Agreement on Measures to Ensure the Security of the Russian Federation and the Member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, were dictated by these views. We regret that our constructive proposals were rejected by the countries of the West.

As for the Ukraine crisis, Russia is open to achieving the goals of the special military operation via political and diplomatic means. This implies the cessation of supplying western arms and mercenaries to Ukraine, a ceasefire, Ukraine returning to its neutral, non-bloc status, recognition of the new territorial realities established after the realisation of the rights of the peoples to self-determination, and the demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine including the elimination of all threats emanating from it.

All integral rights, including the right to talk and study in a native language, shall be guaranteed to Ukrainian citizens including the Russian-speaking population and those of other national minorities. All unlawful restrictive measures must be lifted, and all politicised lawsuits filed with international courts shall be withdrawn.

We are confident that progress on this path will lead to a universal, just and stable peace.

The main obstacle to a peaceful settlement today is the “impossibility” of negotiations with President of Russia Vladimir Putin as formalised in legislation via an executive order by Vladimir Zelensky on September 30, 2022, and the Ukrainian leader’s other initiatives that are indicative of official Kiev’s complete departure from today’s realities including the requirement to withdraw Russian forces from our new regions – Donbass, Crimea, and the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions. We would also like to recall that it was Ukraine who suspended peace talks with Russia initiated by the former in April 2022.