My Take | Zelensky and Putin should each declare victory and then settle
- Only the Ukrainian leader, not China, can secure his country’s nuclear safety and end the war – if he wants to, and if his Western backers would let him
Listening to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at a defence forum in Singapore, you might think China is a 10-foot-tall giant who can just impose its will on Moscow.
Truth be told, that power does not lie with Beijing, but in him. He is the superhero.
But perhaps he underestimates himself, or he simply doesn’t want to end the war at this time, even though it is hopeless as he himself has admitted without renewed Western commitments that will risk direct Nato involvement and a nuclear war.
Let’s consider all three points he has made.
The Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is located in southern Ukraine and has been controlled by Russian forces since early in the war. The fear is that the Russians could damage it so much as to cause a nuclear meltdown and an environmental disaster – Chernobyl 2.0, in other words.
However, it’s actually located very close to Crimea, which has been occupied or annexed, depending on your political sympathy, by Russia since 2014, and its Black Sea naval fleet. The Russians probably want to avoid a nuclear meltdown as much as the Ukrainians.