China welcomes planned US–Russia engagement over Ukraine war

ISTANBUL

China on Friday said it was “glad” to see continued engagement between Russia and the US over the war in Ukraine, which has lasted for more than three years.

Beijing “supports all efforts conducive [to the] peaceful settlement of the crisis,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian told a news conference in Beijing.

Lin was responding to questions about US President Donald Trump’s plans to meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Hungary within the next two weeks.

China “is glad to see Russia and the US keep in contact, improve their relations, and advance the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis,” Lin added.

Trump said Thursday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov would meet next week to set the time and venue for the presidential meeting.

Both meetings were publicly discussed after Trump and Putin held a bilateral telephone call earlier Thursday.

“Maybe it’s already set up. They’ve already spoken,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, referring to his expected meeting with Putin.

Trump is scheduled to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House on Friday, saying he would brief him on his “very good” call with Putin.

“We have a problem. They don’t get along too well, those two, and it’s sometimes tough to have meetings. So, we may do something where we’re separate, but separate but equal,” Trump said.

The US president added that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban would host his meeting with Putin in Budapest.

Trump’s announcement of his meeting with Putin — which would be their second since the two leaders met in Alaska in August — comes as Washington has urged China and India to curb imports of Russian crude.

Beijing has rejected the pressure, warning that it would take countermeasures if its interests were harmed over its ties with Moscow.