China urges for the END of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as it calls for a cease-fire and peace talks

China has urged for the end of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – as its foreign ministry called for a cease-fire and peace talks on Thursday.

The communist state said it wants to prevent the crisis from getting out of control, noting that dialogue and negotiation are the only viable ways to resolve the conflict, a position paper from the Chinese foreign ministry released on Friday said.

On the one-year anniversary of Russia invading Ukraine, China called for a comprehensive ceasefire to the fighting and gradually promotes de-escalation and easing of the situation.

‘Conflict and war benefit no one. All parties must stay rational and exercise restraint, avoid fanning the flames and aggravating tensions, and prevent the crisis from deteriorating further or even spiraling out of control,’ the statement said.

The plan issued Friday morning by the Foreign Ministry also urges the end of Western sanctions imposed on Russia, measures to ensure the safety of nuclear facilities, the establishment of humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of civilians, and steps to ensure the export of grain after disruptions caused global food prices to spike. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has set out aims for the second year of the invasion and after a series of speeches in the run up to the anniversary, he announced plans to deploy the new Sarmat multi-warhead intercontinental ballistic missiles this year.

‘Nuclear weapons must not be used and nuclear war cannot be fought,’ the statement said. ‘We oppose development, use of biological and chemical weapons by any country under any circumstances.’

China has claimed to be neutral in the conflict, but it has a ‘no limits’ relationship with Russia and has refused to criticize its invasion of Ukraine over even refer to it as such, while accusing the West of provoking the conflict and ‘fanning the flames’ by providing Ukraine with defensive arms.

Russia and China have increasingly aligned their foreign policies to oppose the U.S.-led liberal international order. 

Foreign Minister Wang Yi reaffirmed the strength of those ties when he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a visit to Moscow this week.

China has also been accused by the U.S. of possibly preparing to provide Russia with military aid, something Beijing says lacks evidence.

Given China’s positions, that throws doubt on whether its 12-point proposal has any hope of going ahead – or whether China is seen as an honest broker.

Before the proposal was released, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called it an important first step. 

‘I think that, in general, the fact that China started talking about peace in Ukraine, I think that it is not bad. It is important for us that all states are on our side, on the side of justice,’ he said at a news conference Friday with Spain’s prime minister.

State Department spokesman Ned Price said earlier Thursday that the U.S. would reserve judgment but that China´s allegiance with Russia meant it was not a neutral mediator. 

‘We would like to see nothing more than a just and durable peace … but we are skeptical that reports of a proposal like this will be a constructive path forward,’ he said.

Price added that the U.S. hopes ‘all countries that have a relationship with Russia unlike the one that we have will use that leverage, will use that influence to push Russia meaningfully and usefully to end this brutal war of aggression. (China) is in a position to do that in ways that we just aren´t.’

The peace proposal mainly elaborated on long-held Chinese positions, including referring to the need that all countries’ ‘sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity be effectively guaranteed.’

It also called an end to the ‘Cold War mentality’ – it’s standard term for what it regards as U.S. hegemony and interference in other countries.

‘A country´s security cannot be at the expense of other countries´ security, and regional security cannot be guaranteed by strengthening or even expanding military blocs,’ the proposal said. ‘

The legitimate security interests and concerns of all countries should be taken seriously and properly addressed.’

China abstained Thursday when the U.N. General Assembly approved a nonbinding resolution that calls for Russia to end hostilities in Ukraine and withdraw its forces. It is one of 16 countries that either voted against or abstained on almost all of five previous resolutions on Ukraine.

The resolution, drafted by Ukraine in consultation with its allies, passed 141-7 with 32 abstentions, sending a strong message on the eve of the first anniversary of the invasion that appears to leave Russia more isolated than ever.

While China has not been openly critical of Moscow, it has said that the present conflict is ‘not something it wishes to see,’ and has repeatedly said any use of nuclear weapons would be completely unacceptable, in an implied repudiation of Putin´s statement that Russia would use ‘all available means’ to protect its territory.

‘There are no winners in conflict wars,’ the proposal said.

‘All parties should maintain rationality and restraint … support Russia and Ukraine to meet each other, resume direct dialogue as soon as possible, gradually promote the de-escalation and relaxation of the situation, and finally reach a comprehensive ceasefire,’ it said.

Putin met with China’s top diplomat in Moscow yesterday and declared ‘other countries will not influence our relations’ as he doubles down on forging ties with Beijing amid the West’s condemnation of his war in Ukraine.

In a clear sign of his desire to cosy up to the eastern superpower, Putin warmly greeted Wang Yi at the Kremlin today before the pair sat down to talk business face-to-face, mere feet from one another.

It was a stark contrast to Putin’s treatment of other world leaders which has seen the likes of French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban forced to sit at the opposite end of the room, separated by a humungous table.

Even some of the Kremlin’s top insiders, including loyal foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, hapless defence minister Sergei Shoigu and Ukraine war architect Valery Gerasimov are subjected to extreme social distancing – yet Wang was allowed direct contact with the Russian despot.

Putin told Wang, the Chinese Communist Party’s most senior foreign policy official, that he looked forward to President Xi Jinping visiting him in Moscow. 

The Russian President said ties between Russia and Beijing are important to ‘stabilise the international situation’ amid crippling Western sanctions against Moscow in response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine nearly a year ago.

The pair insisted that relations between Russia and China could not be influenced by other countries in a two-fingered salute to the West and Ukrainians.

Wang meanwhile told Putin told that Beijing will play a constructive role in reaching a political settlement of the crisis in Ukraine, the TASS news agency reported.

‘Before the war, we saw Russians alive. Now we only see them dead’: IAN BIRRELL spends two frozen days dug in with a heavy gun unit in Ukraine… read his vivid dispatch and you’ll almost feel the earth shake beneath your feet

The Ukrainian soldiers were hiding among the trees and buried in hobbit-like holes beneath the snow. But the Russian drones were still buzzing overhead.

Over the past two days, the troops had managed to shoot down six of these aircraft — often packed with explosives. The team’s medic offered me a set of wings as a souvenir.

Shells were also landing in this wooded encampment by the frontline. Three men had been wounded by shrapnel and the back wheels off a lorry had been blown off.

Several trees bore the scars of war, with splintered trunks and branches ripped off. ‘Now we have lots of wood for the fire,’ joked one soldier, wearing a fleece over his camouflage gear.

But then, soon after breakfast on Monday, an enemy drone evaded all their efforts to bring it down and it dropped a bomb directly onto one of the Ukrainians’ precious U.S.-made howitzers. The long barrel was ripped open near the base, the targeting mechanism ruined — so after one week in this frontline position, firing up to 150 rounds a day, the unit hastily moved two miles away to protect their remaining two field guns.

‘It’s difficult to relocate all the time and dig new dugouts in this solid winter ground,’ admitted Vitaly, their 23-year-old commander, as his men packed up their few possessions and the ammunition scattered around us in the snow and mud.

‘Now we need to move again. Go to the new place, dig new dugouts. We’ll try to move closer, to reach the enemy with our shells. We can target anything: tanks, infantry, drones. Sometimes we know the results, but not often.’

Earlier this week, I spent two days with the 76 soldiers in this Ukrainian artillery team. Over the past year of Vladimir Putin’s war, they have swept more than 100 miles east, from Ukraine’s second city of Kharkiv to their current position attacking enemy forces in occupied Luhansk.

Distant explosions — the drumbeat of battle — echoed around the frozen landscape. At one point, while we were speaking, the men suddenly went silent. ‘You need constantly to listen to the surroundings. Where do the sounds come from?’ one told me later.

On the first day, thick snow fell. The next, it turned to slush and mud. My hands froze on both days as a biting wind whipped over fields of unharvested sunflowers, their blackened heads drooping as if in mourning for this terrible war.

On the stove in the makeshift kitchen, a pan had been filled with snow, which was being melted for water. One middle-aged soldier told me how he wished he was back home. ‘I’m from Odesa and it’s 4C there,’ he said.

Yet for this band of Ukrainian brothers, there was no rest from their relentless mission to move, dig fresh bunkers, fire at their Russian foes and then move on again. ‘It’s a war, so what can you do?’ said one. ‘It feels like eternal migration with digging.’

With two volunteers, I drove to their frontline position — about 20 miles from the recaptured town of Kupiansk, now coming under heavy Russian bombardment. They were delivering a generator, along with supplies of food, toilet paper and wet wipes.

Our journey was complicated: many bridges have been destroyed and a dam blown up. At the edge of one broken crossing I saw five men fishing through the thick ice below.

We stopped at a field hospital to deliver medicine and clean clothes to the unit’s men hurt in recent shelling. A young soldier collected them, his discoloured fingers sticking out of a bandaged arm as he showed us a wound on the back of his head.

Then, as we turned off the icy track and crossed snowy fields to our destination, we passed two self-propelled artillery that had been crunched into piles of burnt and twisted metal. ‘They’re ours,’ said Andriy, one of the volunteers.

It was a bleak place in winter: desolate-looking villages studding the open, flat fields — many filled with mines — and fringed with straggly lines of trees. Inside one such thicket, we found our battery.

After we parked the car, I came across a soldier digging out a new bunker. Even the commander, who joined a military academy in his teens and took charge of the unit five months ago, told me he dug out his own holes in the ground for survival.

The men explained how they use a small bit of explosive to blow off frozen topsoil. Then, after hollowing out their burrows in the earth, they cover the roof with chopped logs, cardboard wrapping from shells, sheets of plastic and finally soil.

‘If you want to live, you need to dig,’ said Ivan, 37, a father of two young children who first joined the army eight years ago. ‘I’m a good digger since I’m a builder. If I had to choose between a spade and a gun, I’d definitely chose the spade.’

Yet he admitted their nomadic lifestyle was tough. ‘You just settle down, build a little kitchen, dig the dugouts and suddenly need to leave. You can’t really get used to it.’

He has been unable to visit his family for five months. ‘My wife misses me so much, she wants me home. I call her every day,’ he said. ‘It’s good that it’s not 1943 when you had to write letters to your family —at least we can talk with video.’

Ivan admitted he was lucky to survive the latest attack, since he was close to the targeted howitzer. ‘When it hit us, I’d gone for a cigarette in the dugout,’ he said. ‘So you see, smoking can actually save your life.’

A former infantryman, this soldier admitted it was easier in the artillery since they did not actually see the Russians. ‘Mentally, it’s much tougher in the infantry. You need to kill people face-to-face, but here you just shoot and don’t see anybody.’ Or as one of his comrades later put it: ‘Before the war, we saw Russians alive. After the war, we only see them dead.’

Walking between the trees, I saw men chopping wood for fires. Piles of logs had been cut with chainsaws. It looked almost like a forestry encampment — apart from the clusters of unfired shells and snouts of artillery sticking out from under netting.

Chimneys poked through the snow, puffing smoke. Descending some roughly hewn steps, I found a burrow for eight troops that was surprisingly warm. ‘We have food, internet, water — who could ask for anything more?’ said one soldier, laughing.

Before the war, this man — also the father of a young child — made heating briquettes. But he was mobilised after the full-scale invasion. ‘When the heavy hitting starts, we hide here in the dugout,’ he said. ‘But we always have the feeling of danger.’

Earlier, I met an infantryman who told me his comrades had been facing more confrontations with enemy sabotage and reconnaissance units in recent weeks. He presumed this was ahead of the anticipated Russian offensive. ‘They’re coming closer, sneaking for weak points to break through. We’re in woods, so the fights can be very tight over 30 or 40 metres,’ he told me.

In this war, artillery has become strategically vital, after an era of U.S.-led conflicts in which control of the skies rendered shelling on the ground less effective.

‘Artillery was the dominant weapon on the battlefields of both the First and Second World Wars, but then it played a lesser role in Vietnam and Iraq,’ said Phillips O’Brien, professor of strategic studies at St Andrews University in Scotland.

‘But in this war, neither side controls the air, tanks seem so vulnerable and moving forward so difficult. This means that artillery has become more significant and the artillery duel is hugely important.’

But Vitaly, the impressive young commander of one of Ukraine’s biggest batteries, said his troops lacked sufficient artillery after suffering ‘lots of losses’ to Russia’s Lancets, a sophisticated new ‘loitering’ drone with a range of 25 miles. ‘We would like Great Britain to send us more weapons,’ he told me.

Later, their quartermaster explained how they started the war using Soviet-made Giatsints, which were heavier, harder to calibrate but tougher than their U.S.-made Excaliburs. ‘You can beat them with a hammer and they’d still work,’ said Anton.

‘With the American ones, you must care more for them, which is difficult in these conditions. The Excaliburs can shoot four times a minute while the Giatsints go six or seven times a minute. But of course, the American ones are better.’

Other soldiers said many of their donated shells were very old, showing me pictures of an American missile dated 1958 — when Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the White House and Elvis Presley had released Jailhouse Rock.

‘These are antiques,’ said Mykhailo, 41, a businessman before mobilisation last June and another of the commanders. ‘But the problem is not the age of the weapons but the range of shooting. The older weapons are short-range. We have to move close and become like the infantry — and the closer we go, the more dangerous it is. It is like a suicide mission. When we go so close, even the mortar can reach us.’

The Ukrainian soldiers said while they had enough shorter-range shells, which can travel about five miles, they were down to just nine longer-range ones that can hit both targets 25 miles away and anti-aircraft defences.

Many of the men told me they had lost friends fighting in this war and all admitted to being scared at times. ‘We’re humans, after all,’ said one.

When we left, the volunteers gave a lift back to Kharkiv to a soldier who was bunking off for the night after being refused permission to see his pregnant wife. He bought her a big bunch of flowers and a teddy bear in the national colours of blue and yellow.

These volunteers — working out of a cafe that’s been turned into a field kitchen churning out 1,500 meals a day — have followed this unit on its advance in the region, visiting the men up to three times a week with supplies to keep up morale.

Among the chefs peeling mountains of beetroot, potatoes and onions, I found one man who had served in Russia’s army during its brutal war in Chechnya, which was infamous for atrocities.

‘I knew what would happen if they came here,’ said Adalyat Vezirov, 47, a builder originally from Azerbaijan. ‘I heard what the soldiers talked about when they went there, hearing about lots of murder and raping. I knew it would be the same here.’

Little wonder the troops enduring such challenging conditions on the frontline all said they were motivated by patriotism and a desperate desire to protect their people, fused with loathing of the Russian invasion and a fierce desire for freedom.

‘I don’t hate Russians — I just want them to disappear from the political map,’ said one. ‘My conscience is clear. I’m defending my country and my family. I am fighting for freedom.’

Yet Anton, the 29-year-old quartermaster from Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine, underscored the strange complexities of this epochal conflict. As we sat in an underground burrow on the frontline, he told me how his Russian-speaking grandmother so inspired him to love Ukraine with its traditional poetry that he joined the pro-democracy protests that sparked Russia’s attack on Crimea in 2014.

Yet, at the same time, his own mother misses the Soviet Union and admires the despotic Putin.

‘We have lots of conflicts since I’m a patriot and she is pro-Russian,’ he said. ‘Now she doesn’t know what to think. She tells me ‘it is most important that you stay alive, all the rest is nothing.’

He added with a shrug that he had become so used to the conditions that if the war dragged on for many years, ‘maybe I will even miss it’.

Then came the successful drone attack — and the dutiful men in this artillery battery packed up their missiles. They moved on with their guns to dig a fresh warren of survival holes in another freezing stretch of woodland on the frontline of this terrible war. 

Additional reporting: Dzvinka Pinchuk