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ON A TRAIN FROM SUMY TO Ukraine’s president invited his powerful Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to visit the war-torn nation, saying they haven’t been in contact since the war began and he is “ready to see him here.”
“I want to speak with him,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy told The Associated Press on Tuesday, the week after Xi visited Russian President Vladimir Putin last week. China had no immediate response about whether a Xi visit to Ukraine would happen.
China has been economically aligned and politically favorable toward neighboring Russia across many decades, and Beijing has provided Putin diplomatic cover by staking out an official position of neutrality in the war. Xi, a powerful leader who commands the resources of the world’s most populous nation, is an important player in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and even China’s lack of involvement is a potent statement.
Zelenskyy spoke to the AP aboard a train shuttling him across Ukraine, to cities near some of the fiercest fighting and others where his country’s forces have successfully repelled Russia’s invasion.
