Zelenskyy invites China’s Xi Jinping to Ukraine

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned Tuesday that if his country does not win the battle in the key eastern city, Russia could begin building international support for a deal that could require Ukraine to make unacceptable compromises. He also invited the Chinese leader, who has long aligned himself with Russia, to visit.

If Bakhmut falls to Russian forces, its president, Vladimir Putin, will “sell this victory to the West, to society, to China, to Iran,” Zelenskyy said in an interview with The Associated Press.

“If they will feel the blood – smell that we are weak – they will push, push, push,” Zelenskyy said in English, which he used for almost the entire interview.

The Ukrainian leader spoke to the AP on a train that took him across Ukraine, to towns near some of the fiercest fighting and others where his country’s forces have successfully repelled the Russian invasion. The AP is the first news organization to travel extensively with Zelenskyy since the war began more than a year ago.

Since then, Ukraine – supported by many Western countries – has surprised the world with the strength of its resistance against the larger, better equipped Russian military. Ukrainian forces have captured the capital, Kyiv, and are pushing Russia back from other key strategic areas.

But as the war enters its second year, Zelenskyy finds himself focused on maintaining high motivation in the military and the general population of Ukraine – especially the millions who have fled abroad and those who live in comfort and safety far from the front lines. .

Zelenskyy also knows that his country’s success is due to a lot of international military support, especially from the United States and Western Europe. But some in the United States – including Republican Donald Trump, the former American president and current 2024 candidate – have questioned whether Washington should continue to provide Ukraine with billions of dollars in military aid.

Trump’s likely Republican rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, also suggested that defending Ukraine in a “territorial dispute” with Russia is not a significant US national security priority. He later walked back that statement after facing criticism from other corners of the GOP.

Zelenskyy did not mention Trump or other Republican politicians by name – a figure he could face if he wins the 2024 election. But he said he was worried the war could be affected by a shift in political forces in Washington.

“The United States really knows that if they stop helping us, we’re not going to win,” he said in the interview. He sipped tea as he sat on a narrow bed in a cramped and unadorned sleeper cabin on a state train.

The president’s carefully calibrated train journey is an extraordinary journey through a war-torn country. Zelenskyy, who has become a recognizable face around the world as he earnestly tells his story to country after country, uses his morale-building trips to bring his influence to areas close to the front lines.

He traveled with a small cadre of advisers and a large group of heavily armed security officers in battle fatigues. Their goals include a ceremony marking the anniversary of the liberation of a city in the Sumy region and a visit with troops stationed in front-line positions near Zaporizhzhia. Each visit was hidden until after he left.

Can’t lose momentum

Zelenskyy recently made a similar visit near Bakhmut, where Ukrainian and Russian forces have been locked in a fierce and bloody battle for months. While some Western military analysts have suggested that the city is not strategically important, Zelenskyy warned that a loss anywhere at this stage of the war could affect the momentum of the Ukrainian war.

“We cannot lose a step because war is a pie – a piece of victory. Small victories, small steps,” he said.

Zelensky’s comments were an admission that losing the seven-month battle for Bakhmut – the longest war to date – would be a costly political defeat rather than a tactical one.

He predicted that the pressure from the defeat in Bakhmut would come quickly – from the international community and in his own country. “Our people are going to be fed up,” he said. “Our people will push me to compromise with them.”

So far, Zelenskyy says he has not felt the pressure. The international community is largely gathering in Ukraine after the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022.

‘I want to talk to him’

In an AP interview, Zelenskyy extended an invitation to Ukraine to one of the most important and strategic leaders he has ever visited – Chinese President Xi Jinping. “We are ready to see him here,” he said. “I want to talk to him. I had contact with him before the full-scale war. But for this year, more than a year, I haven’t.”

China, economically aligned and politically agreeable to Russia over many decades, has provided Putin diplomatic cover by staking out the official position of neutrality in the war.

Xi visited Putin in Russia last week, raising the prospect that Beijing may be ready to supply Moscow with the weapons and ammunition it needs to replenish its stockpiles. But Xi’s trip ended without any announcement. A few days later, Putin announced that he would deploy tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus, which neighbors Russia and pushed the Kremlin’s nuclear stockpile closer to NATO territory.

Zelenskyy suggested Putin’s move was intended to upset the lack of assurances he received from China.

“What does that mean? It means that the visit is not good for Russia,” Zelenskyy speculated.

The president made several predictions about the biggest question about the war: how it would end. However, he believed that his nation would win through a series of “small victories” and “small steps” against “a very big country, a big enemy, a big army” – but an army, he said, with a “small heart.”

And Ukraine itself? While Zelenskyy acknowledged that the war had “changed us,” he said that in the end, it made society stronger.

“It can be one way, to divide the country, or another way – to unite us,” he said. “I am very grateful. I thank everyone – every partner, our people, thank God, everyone – that we found this way in this critical time for the nation. Finding this way is the thing that saved our nation, and we save our land, we are together.”