Chinese return home as Beijing urged to rein in Moscow
Four flights carrying mainland citizens who had been stranded in war-torn Ukraine have landed in China, as Beijing comes under more pressure to help rein in Moscow.
Two flights arrived in the cities of Lanzhou and Jinan yesterday, official news agency Xinhua reported. It came after the first two flights of China’s evacuation effort arrived a day earlier in Zhengzhou and Hangzhou. No further details were given, including how many Chinese nationals were on board the flights.
Beijing has been criticised for failing to warn its roughly 6,000 citizens – mostly students and businesspeople – to leave Ukraine before the war began, as other countries did. The foreign ministry last Thursday said more than 3,000 citizens had been evacuated by coach to neighbouring countries where they would board flights back to China.
As the Russian advance on Kyiv and other major cities in Ukraine became more deadly yesterday, Moscow again agreed to open safe-passage corridors for residents to leave the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, a day after a promised ceasefire collapsed.
Eduard Basurin, head of the pro-Russian military in separatist-held Donetsk, said Russian forces were set to reopen Mariupol and Volnovakha yesterday. He did not say for how long nor whether a ceasefire would accompany the evacuation.
Ukrainian officials confirmed evacuations from Mariupol would take place starting from 12pm local time. Pavlo Kyrylenko, head of the Donetsk regional military administration, said a ceasefire would be in effect between 10am and 9pm.
Yesterday’s evacuations were announced along with a third round of talks between Russia and Ukraine scheduled for today, with no additional details given, including the location.
Previous meetings held in Belarus had led to a ceasefire agreement to create humanitarian corridors for the evacuation of children, women and older people from Ukrainian cities.
Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed Ukraine for Saturday’s failed ceasefire and warned that the country’s ongoing resistance was putting its future as a nation in jeopardy. He also likened the West’s sanctions on Russia to “declaring war”.
Officials in Mariupol – a city of 430,000 that has had no water or power for days – said they had to postpone the operation because of Russian shelling, while Russia claimed Ukraine was blocking people from leaving. Doctors Without Borders described the situation as “catastrophic”.
Mariupol Mayor Vadym Boychenko said thousands of residents had gathered for safe passage out of the city on Saturday when shelling began and the evacuation was stopped. Later in the day, he said the attack had escalated further. “The city is in a very, very difficult state of siege,” Boychenko told Ukrainian TV.
Russian forces continue to focus on the capital Kyiv while intensifying their attacks on Kharkiv in the east and Mykolaiv in the south, where they have made significant advances, seeking to cut off Ukraine’s access to the sea. Capturing Mariupol could allow Russia to establish a land corridor to Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.
The number of Ukrainians fleeing the country has reached 1.4 million, while the United Nations human rights office said at least 351 civilians had been confirmed killed since the February 24 invasion, with the true number likely much higher. The World Health Organization yesterday confirmed “several” attacks on health care centres in Ukraine with multiple deaths and injuries, which it said violated international humanitarian law.
Putin on Saturday said the attack had gone beyond Donetsk and Luhansk – which Moscow recognised as independent before the invasion – to cut off supplies from the West to “nationalists and radicals”, Russian state news network RT reported.
Putin said he had ordered the attack to neutralise the “real threat” from Kyiv and Nato.
Yesterday he met Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who acted as an intermediary in the conflict, and spoke by phone to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who urged Putin to “end this war immediately”.
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden spoke with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky yesterday to discuss ongoing efforts to impose sanctions on Russia and speed up US military, humanitarian and economic assistance.
Zelensky also pleaded with American lawmakers for help – fighter planes to help secure the skies over Ukraine and an embargo on Russian oil imports – even as he insisted Russia was
being defeated. He also said Russian troops had advanced on a third nuclear power plant.
In a meeting with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the Ukraine-Poland border, Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba said his country “will win this war” and called for more military aid from Nato.
Blinken visited Poland amid reports that the two countries were discussing the possibility of the eastern European country providing more fighter jets to Ukraine with the United States potentially agreeing to backfill Poland’s fleet of fighter planes if Warsaw decides to transfer its used MiG-29s to Ukraine.
The US and the European Union have meanwhile piled pressure on China, urging Beijing to use its influence with Moscow to help end the conflict in Ukraine.
Blinken told his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on Saturday in a phone call the world was watching to see which nations stood up for freedom and sovereignty.
According to the foreign ministry readout, Wang again said the crisis could only be resolved through dialogue and that Beijing opposed any moves that added “fuel to the flames” – a veiled swipe at Western sanctions.
Shi Yinhong, an international relations expert at Renmin University of China, said Wang’s remarks suggested Beijing would not change its stance or join the
West to condemn its ally Moscow, which it had avoided doing.
“America’s confrontation, suppression and isolation has pushed Beijing to stand with Moscow,” he said. “It is impossible for China to formally declare that it will break from such an important strategic partner, even though Beijing has never – and I believe in the near future will not – supported Russia’s all-out attack on Ukraine.”