KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The Ukrainian military has captured two Chinese men fighting with the Russian army in the eastern Donetsk region, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Tuesday.
Ukraine has information that there are “significantly more” Chinese fighting alongside the Russians in the more than three-year war, Zelenskyy said, adding that he has asked his top diplomat “to immediately contact Beijing and find out how China is going to react to this.”
China has provided strong diplomatic support for Russia since it launched its full-scale invasion of its neighbor, which was widely criticized in the West. Beijing has also contributed an economic lifeline through the trade in energy and consumer goods.
However, China is not known to have provided Russia with weapons or military expertise, unlike Iran and North Korea, with the latter even providing troops, according to American and South Korean officials.
Russia allows foreigners to enlist in its military, as does Ukraine. The pay offered by Moscow makes serving for Russia attractive.
Russia has effectively rejected a U.S. proposal for an immediate and full 30-day halt in the fighting, and both sides are believed to be readying a spring-summer campaign on the battlefield.
“I cannot see any indications that would lead to a ceasefire or even a peace, but I see many indications (for) the continuation of the war,” Nico Lange, a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, said in an analysis Monday.
Zelenskyy said a clash with Chinese soldiers occurred near the villages of Tarasivka and Bilohorivka in the Donetsk region, where six Chinese military personnel engaged Ukrainian troops. Two Chinese were taken prisoner, Zelenskyy said at a news conference in Kyiv alongside visiting Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever.
Zelenskyy said China would be the third country to offer military support to the Kremlin after Iran, which has supplied attack drones, and North Korea. The U.S. and Europe have been Ukraine’s biggest backers in the war.
Zelenskyy noted that previously captured North Korean soldiers were fighting in Russia’s Kursk border region, where Ukrainian forces captured territory, while the Chinese were caught on Ukrainian soil.
Meanwhile, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russian Foreign Ministry officials will take part in talks with the U.S. in Istanbul planned for Thursday.
He didn’t elaborate what the talks would be about, but the foreign ministry’s involvement suggests it is another round of talks about normalizing their respective embassies’ operations and increasing their staff numbers after years expelling each others’ diplomats.
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