Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia share China’s concerns about the West easing restrictions on Kiev’s use of weapons deep inside Russia, Beijing’s special representative for Eurasian affairs said on Tuesday.
Li Hui made the remarks while briefing the media after the fourth round of shuttle diplomacy on the Ukraine crisis, during which he visited the three countries seen as representative of the so-called Global South.
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Kiev already has the approval of several Western states to hit “legitimate” targets within Russia using donated weapons, and a concession from Washington for “conducting counter-fire defensive operations” across the border.
Vladimir Zelensky has resumed calls for the country’s Western backers to expand the permitted strike range – a prospect that Moscow has warned would constitute an escalation of the conflict.
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“At present, the international community is generally concerned about the further escalation and spillover of the Ukrainian crisis, and more and more countries believe that the top priority is to promote the cooling of the situation,” said Li.
“All parties believe that the prolonged crisis is not just about Russia and Ukraine, but that the global war system represented by some military-industrial complexes is behind the conflict,” he said.
The Pentagon said earlier this month that its stance on strikes in Russia had not changed, and that Ukraine was still banned from using US-supplied ATACMS missiles, which can hit a target up to 300km (186 miles) away, for attacks deep within Russian territory. However, Moscow’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, warned last week that Washington’s words could no longer be trusted, as it looks to be “essentially preparing the ground” to remove all existing restrictions “at a certain point.”
Li said the focus of his latest diplomatic trip was to jointly explore ways of restarting the Ukraine peace process. In May, China and Brazil presented a six-point proposal for a diplomatic settlement of the conflict, which highlighted diplomacy as the sole means with which to bring about peace, and advocated for an international summit that both Russia and Ukraine would attend.