Interview: Zelensky willing to have direct dialogue with Xi Jinping

25.02.2023

Ihor Zhovkva, Deputy Director of the Ukrainian President’s Office, said in an interview with DW that Kiev is ready to share “Ukraine’s understanding of the war” with China and introduce Ukraine’s ten-point proposal for a peace plan. He also called on the West to continue to provide arms assistance, and emphasized that every inch of Ukraine’s territory cannot be traded.

Deutsche Welle: Ihor Zhovkva is Deputy Director of the Office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. He is in Kiev for our interview. There are reports that the Ukrainian president plans to meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. What is the purpose of meeting with Chinese leaders? Does President Zelensky think China can be a credible peace broker?

Zovkwa: (Zelensky) President believes in the wisdom of the Chinese people and the Chinese leadership. China’s role is critical not only in its own region of Asia, but also in the world. China has always played a very important role in history, in global history. That’s why, when the Ukrainian president talked about a possible phone call with President Xi Jinping — who, by the way, haven’t spoken in a year since Russia invaded Ukraine — he said he was ready to share Ukraine’s understanding of what was going on with President Xi Jinping: The understanding of Russia’s aggression against countries in the heart of Europe, and how Ukraine hopes to bring peace to the region. The president will share with President Xi Jinping a ten-point peace plan for Ukraine, which is really not only a plan to bring peace to the battlefield, but also how to take away Russia’s aggressive means in other areas outside the battlefield, in agriculture, food security, the environment protection, violation of the Charter of the United Nations, etc. We definitely have a lot to talk about with President Xi.

Deutsche Welle: The United States said that it has intelligence that China may provide lethal military assistance to Russia, which may pose a threat to Ukraine. Did the United States share this intelligence with the President of Ukraine?

Zovkova: The Chinese official representatives met with our foreign minister a week ago on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, and what we heard from the Chinese representatives is that China has neither any such transactions nor relevant plans.

DW: So you believe that China will not provide lethal military assistance.

Zovkwa: It’s not a question of whether I believe it or not, but the message is so. What I told you is the information we got from China.

DW: How do you see the progress of the matter? A year ago, many analysts believed that the Russian military would win the battle very quickly. Things didn’t go that way. Where do you think things will go in the next 12 months?

Zovkwa: You might ask the same questions of the so-called analysts and military experts. One year on, we’re not only standing, we’re not only surviving, but we’ve managed to retake almost 50% of the territory that Russia captured after its all-out invasion last February 24th. The premise is that the West quickly provides Ukraine with the necessary weapons – the weapons needed for the counteroffensive, because Ukraine needs to gain momentum, maintain the same momentum that we showed at the end of last year, when we liberated southern Ukraine, including the city of Kherson, and before that The Kharkov region was liberated.

Provided we have sufficient artillery, including the necessary long-range ammunition,There are also enough main battle tanks.The good news is they’ve arrived. And armored fighting vehicles. As long as we have enough air defenses to protect the Ukrainian interior, we are sure to push further counterattacks throughout Ukrainian territory to get closer to victory. You must have heard our President say many times that we want to win this year.

DW: Assuming you get all the weapons that President Zelensky says his troops need, will he stick to the position that victory will have to include the territories of eastern Ukraine, including the Crimea peninsula, returned to Ukraine?

Zovkwa: Definitely. We will not give up an inch of Ukrainian territory, there can be no transactions of any kind. I want to remind everyone that the aggression did not start in 2022, but the illegal annexation of the Crimea Peninsula in 2014, and then expanded to Donbass. The world did not react quickly at the time. It was not until July of that year that Malaysia Airlines MH17 was shot down that there was no response. So we have to go back to the beginning to solve the problem, from the very beginning of the aggression, that is, Donbass and Crimea in Ukraine.

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