No confirmation of Xi talks, Zelenskyy says

Kyiv, Mar 21 (EFE).- Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday that mooted talks with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping after the latter’s Moscow trip concludes have yet to be confirmed.

“As for a meeting or conversation with China, we have received some signals, but there has been no confirmation. There is nothing specific yet,” Zelenskyy said at a joint press conference alongside Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Kyiv.

Xi was meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss, among other issues, China’s proposal to settle the war in Ukraine.

In a post on his Telegram channel, Zelenskyy called Kishida – the first Japanese minister to travel to a conflict zone since World War II – a “powerful defender of the international order and an old friend of Ukraine.”

The Japanese prime minister arrived in Kyiv by train from neighboring Poland on Tuesday morning.

Kishida then traveled to the town of Bucha, north of the capital, the scene of a massacre of Ukrainian civilians allegedly perpetrated there during the withdrawal of Russian troops in late March 2022.

“Together with the Prime Minister of Japan we have visited Bucha, which survived the occupation last year,” Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Emine Dzheppar, who accompanied Kishida, said on Twitter.

Dzheppar also thanked Japan for donating generators that helped Ukrainians get through the winter amid sustained Russian shelling of Ukraine’s power grid.

“With partners like Japan we will rebuild our country,” Dzheppar added, who posted several photos of Kishida honoring victims of Russian war crimes in Bucha, which was occupied during the early days of the war and liberated by Ukraine last April.

Kishida will leave Ukraine on Tuesday night and is scheduled to meet in Warsaw with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki on Wednesday before returning to Japan. EFE

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