Canada pushing China to include Ukraine in talks with Russia to end war, Joly says

Canada's foreign minister says she has asked her Chinese counterpart to have his country's president, Xi Jinping, speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The role of developing countries in the Ukraine conflict took centre stage Friday as Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly met with her Norwegian counterpart in Ottawa.

Joly said Canada has been pushing China to expand its talks with Russia to include Ukraine, while South Africa’s envoy urged Canada to instead support a settlement to the war.

“We need to broaden the coalition of states with which we are engaging,” Joly said Friday. “It’s a question of international security.”

She was speaking at a public discussion on multilateralism with Norwegian Foreign Affairs Minister Anniken Huitfeldt in Ottawa, hosted by the Global Centre for Pluralism.

The two touched briefly on relations between the two nations, which are both navigating climate change and Indigenous reconciliation. But the event focused primarily on getting developing countries to pressure Russia to end its invasion of Ukraine.

To that end, Joly said she had asked Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang to have his country’s president, Xi Jinping, speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

China has presented a plan for a political settlement to the conflict, but Joly said she used the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in India this month to push Beijing to broaden its talks beyond simply engaging with Moscow.

“When I was in Ukraine, what I clearly heard from President Zelenskyy is that he hadn’t talked yet to Xi Jinping. So when I met with my Chinese counterpart, (that) was clear in my ask,” she said.