“I think you heard such voices in Russian media: ‘What if we respond to Ukrainian strikes with nuclear weapons?’” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told reporters in Kyiv on Thursday. His point: China has now answered those voices, and bluntly.
Zelenskyy said Beijing warned Russia, in what he described as an ultimatum, that there can be no thought of using nuclear weapons. “It seems to me that this was the first time China … directly responded in an ultimatum-like form,” he said.
Where he heard it
The account is secondhand. Zelenskyy said European leaders at the NATO summit in Ankara told him about the Chinese message after speaking with Chinese representatives. “According to them, China responded very seriously, harshly and unequivocally to allegations in Russian media about the possible use of nuclear weapons,” he said, answering a question from Radio NV.
He said the same leaders raised China’s possible role in ending the war during bilateral meetings at the summit. On Beijing’s stance, UNN quoted him saying “the situation has changed a bit,” because European partners reported a noticeably tougher line from the Chinese side than before.
Zelenskyy also met US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the summit. They covered China, its part in the war and its capabilities, along with the conflict in the Middle East. The details, he said, would stay private. “With all due respect, I would like the details of this particular conversation to remain between me and the US president,” he said. Media reports say Trump personally asked Chinese leader Xi Jinping for help ending the war during a summit in Beijing.
The nuclear talk behind it
Zelenskyy’s comments followed a run of high-profile calls in Russia for nuclear escalation. In early June, Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and now deputy chairman of the Security Council, said a nuclear apocalypse is “realistically possible.” He argued that Russia must stay prepared and pointed to its triad of strategic nuclear forces. “That is precisely why our country has a triad of strategic nuclear forces, and it is maintained in proper condition,” he said.
Steven Pifer, a former US ambassador to Ukraine, told Kyiv Post that Medvedev’s rhetoric should not be read as authoritative Kremlin policy. “Former President Medvedev says a lot of things that are, quite frankly, borderline crazy or just outright crazy,” he said. Pifer added that Moscow often uses nuclear threats to intimidate and to weaken Western and European support for Ukraine.
On June 9, a member of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly publicly proposed using nuclear weapons against Ukraine, saying the “special military operation” was not going as planned. On June 21, the pro-Kremlin oligarch Konstantin Malofeev urged nuclear strikes aimed at “terminals, fiber-optic cables in the Atlantic, and with shrapnel missiles in space” to cripple Ukraine’s command and control.
Sources
- Zelenskyy: China urged Putin not to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine
- China warned Russia in an ultimatum about the inadmissibility of using nuclear weapons – Zelenskyy
- Zelensky Says China Issued Rare Ultimatum Rejecting Russian Nuclear Weapons Threats
