China is concerned about an escalation of the war in Ukraine and wants Moscow and Kyiv to hold peace talks, senior Chinese diplomat Qin Gang told his Ukrainian counterpart over a phone call on Thursday.
\nChina, which has refrained from condemning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, has urged both sides to agree to a gradual de-escalation leading to a comprehensive ceasefire in its 12-point paper on the \u201cpolitical resolution of the Ukraine crisis\u201d.
\nThe plan, which received a lukewarm welcome on both sides, called for the protection of civilians and respect for each other\u2019s sovereignty.
\n\u201cChina hopes that all parties will remain calm, rational and restrained, and resume peace talks as soon as possible,\u201d Qin told Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, according to a Chinese foreign ministry statement.
\nChinese President Xi Jinping is expected to visit Russian Vladimir Putin as soon as next week and hold a virtual meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
\nThe White House said that talks between Zelensky and Xi would be a \u201cgood thing,\u201d but warned Beijing against taking a \u201cone-sided\u201d view of the conflict.
\n\u201cWe think it would be a very good thing if the two of them talk,\u201d National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
\n\u201cWe support and have supported\u201d contact, Kirby said. But he cautioned against a Chinese push for a ceasefire in Ukraine, saying it would simply help Russian aggression.
\n\u2019MiG-29 jets in coming days
\nPoland will send Ukraine four MiG-29 fighter jets in the coming days, the president said, making it the first of Kyiv\u2019s allies to provide such aircraft.
\nOne of Ukraine\u2019s staunchest supporters, Warsaw has taken a leading role in persuading sometimes hesitant allies to provide Kyiv with heavy weaponry. It has said that any transfer of jets would be as part of a coalition.
\n\u201cFirstly, literally within the next few days, we will hand over, as far as I remember, four aircraft to Ukraine in full working order,\u201d Andrzej Duda told a news conference. \u201cThe rest are being prepared, serviced.\u201d
\nSlovakia has also been considering whether to send MiG-29s to Ukraine but has yet to reach a decision. Denmark\u2019s PM Mette Frede\u00adriksen said that the debate about sending fighter jets was ongoing.
\n\u201cThis is something we\u2019re discussing in the group of allied countries. It\u2019s a big wish from Ukraine,\u201d she said.
\nTransfers of children is \u2018a war crime\u2019
\nRussia\u2019s forced transfer and deportation of Ukrainian children to areas under its control amounts to a war crime, UN investigators said, adding that they are probing allegations of genocide in the Ukraine conflict.
\nPresenting their first report, the high-level team of investigators said they had determined that Russian authorities had committed \u201ca wide range of war crimes\u201d since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in Feb 2022 \u2014 and also warned of possible crimes against humanity.
\nBut Erik Mose, chairman of the Commission of Inquiry (COI), said that so far they \u201chave not found that there has been a genocide within Ukraine\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
China is concerned about an escalation of the war in Ukraine and wants Moscow and Kyiv to hold peace talks, senior Chinese diplomat Qin Gang…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5395,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}