Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said after the NATO summit in Ankara, held this week, that Chinese authorities had warned the Kremlin against using nuclear weapons in the war against Ukraine. He said he learned this from European leaders during discussions about China’s role in ending the war.
“It seems to me this is the first time China reacted very clearly and harshly, in what I was told was an ultimatum-like form, that the use of nuclear weapons is out of the question,” Zelensky said, referring to calls in Russian media for a nuclear response to Ukrainian strikes.
Zelensky also said he discussed China’s role in a peace settlement in Ankara with Donald Trump, but declined to reveal the details of that conversation. Soon afterward, Finnish President Alexander Stubb indirectly confirmed Zelensky’s account.
Stubb said he had dinner in Finland two days earlier with China’s foreign minister and that they discussed the nuclear issue. According to him, the Chinese side responded in unequivocal terms: “No, that will not happen.”
Beijing has not officially said it issued Moscow any ultimatum, but the Chinese government has consistently spoken against the use of nuclear weapons. At the end of June, China urged Moscow and Kyiv to resume peace talks and end the conflict as soon as possible. Around the same time, Alexander Lukashenko visited Beijing after receiving a delegation from Kyiv in Minsk and traveling to see Vladimir Putin at Valdai. The Kremlin, however, denies that Lukashenko has taken on an informal mediation role.
Russian officials, including Vladimir Putin personally, have repeatedly threatened the use of nuclear weapons since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia has deployed tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, which it has said could be used both on the battlefield and for a limited strike on distant targets. The latest joint Russian-Belarusian nuclear drills took place in May this year.
On the night of July 11, Zelensky said, Russian forces launched a combined attack on Ukraine using 120 drones and 12 missiles, half of them ballistic. In Kyiv, 11 people, including a child, were injured; residential buildings, offices, and a theological seminary were damaged, and fires broke out in three districts of the capital. Russia’s Defense Ministry said the targets in Kyiv were military industry facilities involved in drone production.