Ukraine is not turning towards China. The two countries are in the normal process of cooperation in trade and the fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

“I don’t know, maybe someone sees some special rapprochement between Kyiv and Beijing. I see a normal process of cooperation in trade and the fight against the coronavirus pandemic. As for strategic security issues or strategic sectors of the economy, we primarily cooperate with our Western partners, the European Union, and the United States, and we will be happy to see American money and American companies in the implementation of infrastructure projects in Ukraine,” Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba told journalists in Washington.

According to him, Ukraine wants an even greater arrival of American business in Ukraine to fund and implement projects to bring the two countries closer.

“There is no reversal of Ukraine. We are part of the Western world. We develop as part of this world. However, trade with China is an objective reality, and despite the United States’ principled security policy towards China, trade runs its course. It is according to this model that our relations with China develop,” the foreign minister of Ukraine stressed.

As a reminder, the leaders of Ukraine’s ruling Servant of the People party have repeatedly praised the Government of China. On 13 July, President Volodymyr Zelensky had the first-ever telephone conversation with President Xi Jinping of China. Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to the Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, said that Ukraine could turn towards the East “if the West wants to make friends with Russia at the cost of surrendering Ukrainian interests.”

Experts and analysts suggested that the Government of Ukraine is thus signaling closer cooperation with China and a possible change in foreign policy priorities.

Bohdan Marusyak

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