China cannot act as a peace mediator over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as Beijing’s peace plan would result in the loss of Ukraine’s sovereignty, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis has said.
“We’ve already seen that they are aligning themselves, or they want Russia to align to their version of the global order. And definitely in that world order, Ukraine is not able to maintain its full sovereignty,” Landsbergis told Bloomberg TV after a meeting with his NATO counterparts in Brussels.
He rejected China’s proposals for an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine: “It’s not a peace plan. You cannot have full sovereignty of a country and loss of territory.”
China last month proposed a 12-point peace plan for ending Russia’s war in Ukraine that calls for peace talks and respect for national sovereignty without specific proposals. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said China’s peace plan for Ukraine could be used as a basis to end the war.
Putin’s announcement that he would station nuclear weapons in Belarus, just days after signing a declaration with Xi Jinping on their non-sharing, amounts to a “slap in the face” to China, Landsbergis said in separate remarks.
He said the move amounted to Russia pushing back against China’s attempts to encroach on it as Beijing will soon have Moscow “where they want them — weak militarily, super weak economically, basically a bankrupt country with no allies whatsoever,” Landsbergis said.
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