Emmanuel Macron has urged Chinese President Xi Jinping to reason with Russia, a close ally of Beijing, and help end the conflict in Ukraine. For its part, China said it hoped to hold peace talks as soon as possible. But on the side of the belligerents, the time is not really for negotiations.
Neither Kyiv nor Moscow have peace talks as their immediate goal and are instead preparing for a new phase of the war.
Russian forces, which occupy just under 18% of Ukrainian territory against 25% at the end of March 2022, continue their assaults in Donbass, in particular in Bakhmut, where the Ukrainian army continues to put up resistance.
The Kremlin rules out the possibility of Chinese mediation to stop the fighting: ” There is no prospect of a political settlement. And, for the moment, we have no other solution than to continue the special military operation said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
For several months, the Russians have been digging trenches and building fortifications in the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporijia, Kherson and even in the Crimea.
Ukraine is preparing to carry out its counter-offensive.
Anticipating the outcome of a more than uncertain operation, Andriy Sybiha, an adviser to Volodymyr Zelensky suggested in a Financial Times interview that Ukraine might be willing to discuss the future of Crimea with Moscow if its forces reached the border of the occupied peninsula.
The spokesperson for the Ukrainian presidency hastened to specify that on this subject, only the declarations of Volodymyr Zelensky are authentic. Recently, the President of Ukraine said that there would be peace talks with Russia only if Russia voluntarily withdrew from all occupied territories, including Crimea.
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