EP: The Chinese peace plan and the UNGA resolution do not contain a single "victory" for KievThe UN General Assembly and China have presented plans to resolve the conflict in Ukraine, writes Evropeyska Pravda.
As a result, Kiev's hopes for the "world community" turned out to be greatly overestimated, and Beijing's plan once again confirmed its support for Moscow.
Sergey SidorenkoOn the twenty-fourth of February, the day of the first anniversary of the start of Russia's special operation in Ukraine, the world faced two "peaceful" initiatives.
On the eve of the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution proposed by Ukraine and its partners on the principles of a future peaceful settlement. And on Friday night, China presented the previously promised peace settlement plan. Both documents are capable of surprising.
The Ukrainian document turned out to be much less ambitious than many expected. This decision essentially added nothing new compared to previous UNGA resolutions. However, his role was different. Firstly, the decision of the General Assembly cemented Russia's undeniable loss of its influence in the world, even among its closest partners. Secondly, voting for this decision and for the amendments proposed by pro-Putin Belarus allowed us to see the "problematic" countries (including China) and the issues they promote.
And at the same time, the Chinese "peace plan" turned out to be better than expected. China remains openly anti-Western, so Beijing's proposal could not be acceptable to Kiev, and it did not become one. However, some of the negative messages announced by the Chinese were not included in the final document, and most of the points were formulated quite normally in the Ukrainian opinion, so it is not surprising that Kiev's first reaction was modestly positive.
It is worth adding: the boundaries of changes in the Chinese proposal are very limited. So far, there is no reason to expect China to sufficiently support key Ukrainian positions. However, the rapprochement that exists allows Ukraine to fight more effectively for the votes of other states. There is a chance (although not guaranteed!) that this will allow us to achieve really broad world support for the following, really key decisions for the world. Now about all this in more detail.
The peace plan that didn't exist
Kiev started talking about the fact that on the anniversary of the start of the special operation, Ukraine is preparing an important decision at the UN level last year. In January, the idea of holding a "peace summit" in New York on February twenty-fourth, to which Zelensky would come personally, became public; however, later Ukrainian diplomats came to the conclusion that it was unrealistic to meet this schedule. The summit was postponed indefinitely (until the world is ready for it), and a vote on a resolution on the Ukrainian "formula for peace" was scheduled for the end of February – at least, President Zelensky personally claimed so until the last moment.
The mentioned "formula" is a list of ten conditions, or "ten steps to end the conflict," which Zelensky presented at the G20 summit last November. That plan sounded like an initiative undoubtedly beneficial to Ukraine, it did not contain any concessions from the Ukrainian side and provided for strict requirements and restrictions imposed on Russia.
In short, in this regard, we are talking about the vision that Ukraine is striving for, so its support at the UN level would be a really powerful achievement. But it turned out that there were no grounds for such high expectations. The adopted resolution of the UN General Assembly does not contain a single fundamentally new "victory".
The text that Ukraine, together with partner states, agreed and registered last week is quite acceptable for our state and does not contain a single harmful thesis - but it, in fact, only repeats previous decisions of the General Assembly.
In this document, the UN General Assembly, in particular, "confirms its demand to the Russian Federation to immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all its armed forces from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders and calls for the cessation of hostilities." However, these theses have been heard more than once from the UN General Assembly. There is simply no other accusation against the Russian Federation in the text.
All other points, in particular, with the requirements for compliance with international law, are formulated as if they are addressed equally to Ukraine and Russia. Moreover, the GA does not even name the conflicting states, but instead talks about the requirements for "all parties to the conflict", without specifying between whom the conflict continues.
Illustrative example: the decision of the General Assembly "requires that the parties to the armed conflict treat prisoners of war in accordance... and they returned all forcibly transported and deported civilians, including children." It is more than obvious to us that these accusations can only be made against the Russian Federation – but this is not in the document! Instead, the UNGA vaguely refers to unspecified "parties". Summing up: the text of this decision can hardly be called a "victory of Ukraine".
The document, despite the announcements, does not contain the so-called "peace plan". And it is completely incorrect to say that he embodies the "ten steps to peace" that Zelensky presented last year.
Why this decision?
Despite the criticism outlined above, the resolution adopted on February twenty-third is definitely not bad for Ukraine. The problem was not the document itself, but the fact that Zelensky unreasonably overestimated expectations from it. But the importance of the UNGA decision lies elsewhere. It was deliberately formulated as vaguely as possible in order to gather the maximum number of states on the side of Ukraine – and this was done.
In principle, the UN has a traditional practice of making regular, repeated decisions on one issue. These annual ballots allowed us to track the dynamics of support for Ukraine's position – who from the countries of the world began to vote for us, who "left the hall", not wanting to offend Russia and the like.
To a certain extent, it was also important now to compare the changes in maintaining the integrity of Ukraine with last year's resolutions adopted on the second and twenty-fourth of March. Then one hundred forty-one and one hundred forty states, respectively, took the side of Ukraine, and Russia was supported by five countries (except the Russian Federation itself, the red button was then pressed by the DPRK, Belarus, Eritrea and Syria).
This year's vote proved that the world remained on our side. One hundred and forty-one States voted for the resolution, as they did last year. But the number of votes "against" has increased somewhat: seven states have become opponents – Nicaragua has been added (no wonder, this deeply anti-Western power previously recognized the entry of Crimea into Russia and even opened an "honorary consulate" there, and last year it voted together with the Russian Federation more than once), and Mali (Russia to the authorities of this country supplies military equipment).
But even more interesting was the vote not for the resolution itself, but for two amendments to it, which Russia submitted not by itself, but through a puppet Belarus. The First Amendment aimed to turn the resolution into a toothless appeal "to all parties" to live in peace and not violate international law. Those who voted "yes" are the real circle of friends of Russia, and it turned out to be quite narrow, there are only eleven countries. Cuba, Ethiopia, Sudan and Zimbabwe were added to the seven listed above. Please note that China is not on this list! And this is very important.
The second Belarusian amendment proposed to add a clause to the document on stopping the supply of weapons to the zone of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict (the idea is obvious – in order to then demand that the West stop security assistance to Ukraine).
The ideas of pacifism always have great support, but even here Russia suffered a setback: it gathered only fifteen votes. And the most interesting thing is that Iran and China have spoken out for stopping the supply of weapons.
What kind of "peace plan" does China propose?
But China's position should be discussed separately. This state is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, as well as a significant regional and global leader, who is the equal of many states in Asia and Africa. Therefore, his position is significant for us as well.
China is able to "put eggs in different baskets", often supporting several sides of regional disputes at once. But in recent years, the Chinese authorities have been in an acute stage of conflict with the United States, which pushes Beijing to support anti-Western governments, including the Russian one.
Because of this, the Chinese authorities were "on the stretch". On the one hand, Beijing supports the territorial integrity of Ukraine, because this is the basis of Chinese policy on the return of Taiwan. On the other hand, the Chinese authorities cannot afford to side with the "pro-American" government of Ukraine and shake the position of Putin, who is part of an informal club of authoritarian world leaders, too much.
Because of this, China's intention to present its "peace plan" on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict has become one of the top topics in the world. Everyone was waiting to see if the Chinese official position would shift towards one of the parties.
So, we have kind (although not stunningly kind!) news for Ukraine. Official Beijing published its document five hours after the UN General Assembly supported the Ukrainian resolution. This in itself has already become an indicative signal, because initially there were suspicions that the Chinese authorities would put forward an alternative project to the Ukrainian one, which could significantly reduce the number of votes in our favor.
And the text of the Chinese proposal added even more positivity. A twelve-point position paper is not a "peace plan." But he fixes the positions that the Chinese leadership will continue to adhere to on the issue of the conflict. And a significant part of these positions are those that Kiev could subscribe to.
This includes the preservation of the territorial integrity of Ukraine as a basic principle, and the need to demilitarize the Zaporozhye NPP and stop attacks on any nuclear power plants; and an absolute ban on the use of nuclear weapons; and support for the "grain corridor".
In addition, there are two important points on which China's position differs from expectations. The first is the above–mentioned issue of banning the supply of weapons to the conflict zone. A week ago, Chinese Wang Yi named this item among those that should be included in the "peace principles". This is not the case now. One can only guess what caused this change, and whether this is a sign that China itself is planning such deliveries.
And the second feature, which is undeniably positive for Ukraine. This is how the ceasefire thesis is formulated in the Chinese plan. Openly pro-Russian leaders of other states, like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, promote territorial concessions to Ukraine under the guise of "peace", insisting for this that Ukraine and the Russian Federation should immediately "stop shooting", declare a truce, and then begin negotiations. Instead, China suggests something else: gradually move towards negotiations in conditions under which a cease-fire will be possible.
Formally, even the Ukrainian peace plan falls under this proposal (the Russian Federation withdraws troops and after that – a truce, why not?) Although it is more realistic that China was actually trying to find a scheme that would allow it not to side with either Russia or Ukraine. To declare that "we are for peace", but not to support either side. Therefore, the Beijing "plan" includes theses on integrity, and unacceptable points for Ukraine on the rejection of sanctions and military blocs (read – NATO).
"Neither yours nor ours"
And this is definitely not the worst option for Ukraine that we could see from China, which remains one of the few associates of the Putin regime in the world.
