The United States wants China to pressure Russia to end the war in Ukraine, US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns said on Tuesday, according to CNN.

“What we need to see from China is to push Russia to withdraw its troops so that Ukraine can regain all its territory and be fully sovereign again in every sense of the word,” Burns said at an event at the US State Department. tank Stimson Center, which he visited virtually.

“It would be useful if China pushed Russia to stop bombing Ukrainian schools, Ukrainian hospitals and Ukrainian residential buildings. We have witnessed massive human losses in just the last month or two during these vicious Russian airstrikes and drone attacks on Ukrainian civilians,” he continued.

“So I think we would like that, and I’m sure European countries would like that as well. This is what Ukraine wants from China,” he added.

Burns said the conversation between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was a “good first step,” but it was unclear if any action would follow.

“We would like China to be much firmer in its advice to the Russians. We would like to see actions to end the war as soon as possible, of course, on terms that the Ukrainian government can accept,” he said.

Burns said the U.S. has been “watching very closely for several months the issue of China’s potential provision of lethal assistance to Russia.”

“We haven’t seen any evidence that the Chinese are doing this, but we continue to watch it,” he said.

Beijing has declared neutrality over the war in Ukraine, but has not condemned Russia’s invasion and has instead strengthened economic and diplomatic ties with Moscow over the past year.

However, Russia was abandoned by three of its allies in the latest UN General Assembly vote on a resolution that qualifies as “aggression” the invasions of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine last year, in a new signal that Moscow’s geopolitical influence is waning.

China, Armenia and Kazakhstan joined most of the world to vote for UN resolution A77/L65 on Tuesday, and historian Serhiy Radchenko explained on his Twitter page that Beijing’s option is all the more interesting because it abstained from all the organization’s votes at the international level. war in Ukraine.

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