On July 23-26, 29 months after Russia launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba finally visited China, one of Moscow’s closest partners on the international stage.
Kuleba’s lengthy meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, was not in itself an unusual event, since there has been a steady trickle of diplomatic exchanges between China and Ukraine at the level of foreign ministers and senior diplomats in recent years. Kuleba and Wang had previously met on several occasions. Nonetheless, this was Kuleba’s first trip to China since the invasion began, and he is the highest-level Ukrainian official to have visited China during this period. The trip appears to be an indicator that both Kyiv and Beijing are interested in revitalizing the diplomatic process surrounding the conflict in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian government certainly appears keener now than it used to be to engage in active negotiations to end (or at least scale down) the war with Russia, in the face of uncertain levels of future support from the West, as well as a consistently complicated situation on the frontlines. The prospect of a potential Republican victory in the upcoming U.S. presidential elections has agitated Kyiv for some time, and it has become increasingly clear that this might have dire consequences for the overall amount of Western support for Ukraine (an impression that was further deepened by Donald Trump’s appointment of J. D. Vance as his presidential running mate).
For a long time throughout the conflict, Ukraine’s government (and many of its allies) had reached out to Beijing, evidently hoping that China might act as a genuine mediator in the war, in light of the considerable leverage it has over Moscow. Beijing has consistently presented itself as a peacemaker in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, but it has in fact made minimal practical efforts to act as such.
China’s leadership has been very reluctant to seriously engage with Kyiv at a senior level, while simultaneously making a point of visibly deepening its political ties with Moscow since the onset of the invasion. On various occasions in recent months, senior Chinese officials reportedly brushed off requests to meet or otherwise engage with Ukrainian officials seeking to involve China in more substantial mediation efforts. This includes Ukraine’s ambassador to China, Pavlo Riabikin, who, as of March 2024, had “secured only a handful of meetings since his arrival in the Chinese capital last summer, despite sending requests to almost 40 different ministries and municipalities.”
There were signs in recent months that Ukraine’s government appeared to be losing its patience with the Chinese stance, and it criticized Beijing in unprecedentedly candid terms. In early June, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy publicly accused Chinese diplomats of helping Moscow derail Ukraine’s peace summit in Switzerland, and he also claimed that Kyiv had evidence that China was assisting Moscow’s war efforts.
Furthermore, Zelenskyy accused Beijing of refusing to meet with Ukrainian officials: “Many times we have wanted to meet Chinese representatives,” Zelenskyy stated, including President Xi Jinping. “Unfortunately, Ukraine does not have any powerful connections with China because China does not want it.”
This notwithstanding, Kuleba’s visit signals that Kyiv remains undeterred in its efforts to try to exert influence on Russia’s most important international partner.
Officially, Kuleba traveled to China at the invitation of Beijing’s chief diplomat, Wang Yi. China has its own set of reasons to engage in this unusual high-profile diplomatic exchange with Kyiv. Throughout the last several years, China’s government has actively touted the country’s role as an international mediator and peace broker, as part of its efforts to claim the mantle of being a responsible global leader. It is possible that, from Beijing’s perspective, Kuleba’s visit was merely a continuation of its previous measures to keep up at least the pretense of being an active party to the international mediation efforts.
Notably, although Kuleba spent several days in China, he was not received by any senior national-level officials besides Wang – least of all by China’s supreme leader Xi Jinping. Further minimizing contact with top officials, Kuleba’s visit was relegated to the southern city of Guangzhou rather than the capital, Beijing.
Diplomatic protocol does not stipulate that China’s president ought to meet a visiting foreign minister, but Xi conspicuously chose to do that when Kuleba’s Russian colleague Sergey Lavrov visited Beijing in April. Xi has thus far deliberately avoided personal engagement with the Ukrainian side, aside from a single phone call with Zelenskyy in 2023 – in stark contrast to his frequent interaction with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
Nonetheless, it is possible that China’s leadership is genuinely interested in getting more actively involved in moderating a conflict that threatens to become increasingly costly for Chinese businesses and interests.
Beijing has undoubtedly sustained its overall de facto support for Russia, as is visible, for instance, in the continuously high levels of engagement between the Chinese and Russian militaries, not least in terms of joint maneuvers and patrols. But there are signs that China is getting increasingly wary of the diplomatic, political, and economic costs of its ongoing partnership with Moscow.
Beijing has been exposed to growing scrutiny and increasingly vocal criticism from Western capitals. When China’s special envoy, Li Hui, traveled to Europe earlier this year to engage in lackluster peacebuilding talks, he received a markedly cold reception in Europe. In all European capitals he visited, Li was reminded that China’s (indirect) support for Russia regarding Ukraine is actively hurting Sino-European ties. EU leaders also communicated this message directly to Xi during their in-person meetings with him in recent months.
Western states have become increasingly outspoken and uncompromising in condemning China’s pro-Russian stance, as was reiterated again in the final communiqué of the 2024 NATO summit in Washington.
Beijing’s wariness regarding the growing costs of its ties with Moscow is reflected in the development of Sino-Russian economic interaction. The imposition of stricter U.S. secondary sanctions has visibly hampered Sino-Russian trade in recent months, as Chinese financial institutions have growing concerns about being targeted by these sanctions. In 2022-2023, trade between China and Russia grew rapidly, but in the first half of 2024 Chinese exports to Russia decreased slightly.
Much of this sluggishness in recent bilateral commerce is owed to the fact that Chinese banks have tightened their processing of Russian payments, after Washington announced its readiness last December to impose secondary sanctions against financial institutions that facilitate the work of the Russian military-industrial complex. The U.S. measures were expanded in June, when Washington imposed sanctions against the Moscow Stock Exchange and the Asian subsidiaries of large banks.
Since the beginning of 2024, Chinese credit institutions have begun to close many accounts of Russian and Belarusian companies and have also sharply tightened checks on payment transactions, forcing Russian businesses to use underground financial schemes with many intermediaries in third countries instead. Both Russian importers and exporters have complained about encountering problems with making direct payments through Chinese banks, particularly after the latest round of U.S. sanctions. Large Chinese banks are frequently blocking payments to and from Russian companies (such as Norilsk Nickel), both in U.S. dollars and in Chinese yuan, and the same is increasingly true for small and informal payment agents on whose services many Russian importers and exporters have come to rely.
In early July, Beijing also introduced additional export controls covering a wide range of products and dual-use goods that can be used in the military industry. Various Chinese companies, including a producer of vital gas liquefaction units for the third stage of Russia’s Arctic LNG 2 liquefied natural gas project, have announced that they are curtailing their work with Russia.
All in all, and particularly in light of China’s sluggish economic growth, there is certainly a sense that Beijing has become increasingly wary of how its ties with Russia affect its commercial and diplomatic interests in those parts of the world on which its economy primarily depends. Thus, there are yet reasons for Kyiv to be hopeful that Beijing might eventually try to use some of its enormous leverage over Russia to push for a peaceful conclusion to the war in Ukraine. However, Kuleba’s visit to China has not been a decisive step in this direction.