Ukraine’s former prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said that Chinese support for Russia was helping it to continue the Ukraine war as he discussed the war’s trajectory at Chatham House on Tuesday 3 November.

Yatsenyuk said that while the Russian economy is in a ‘dire state’, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin still has ‘enough resources to prosecute the war.’ He said the reasons for this included higher oil prices due to the Iran war and Chinese support for Russia.

Yatsenyuk said:

‘I want to be very clear that China isn’t neutral. China actually supports this war, and China is an ally to Russia. Let’s call a spade a spade."

…

“The truth is that China is actually the closest strategic partner to the Russian Federation, and China provided the way to circumvent sanctions for Russia.”

…

He said if the Ukrainian state is preserved, the war ends and various other conditions are met, including Ukraine getting ‘something similar to the Marshall Plan’, then ‘the time will come when Ukraine will regain its complete territorial independency.’

He said he disagreed with the framing of the war as ‘Putin’s war against Ukraine’: ‘This is the war of the Russian people who support Putin against an independent and sovereign nation, which is Ukraine.’

…

Archived