Xi Jinping held his first phone call since the Russian invasion began with Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelensky yesterday. The Chinese president reportedly vowed to remain “neutral” in the conflict but offered his services to try to broker a deal between the two countries. It must have gone fairly well because, within a matter of hours, Xi announced that he would be sending a delegation to Kyiv to begin negotiating a cease-fire. The fact that this is taking place just as Ukraine is preparing to launch an anticipated spring counteroffensive may turn out to be more than a coincidence. But recently leaked documents suggesting that the White House privately fears that Ukraine is losing the war may have put Zelensky in more of a mood to talk.

Chinese president Xi Jinping will send a delegation to Ukraine to hold talks with all parties on resolving the conflict there, following his first phone call with Ukrainian counterpart Volodmyr Zelenskiy e since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

According to Chinese state media Xi made the offer during a telephone call on Wednesday with Zelenskiy and offered to help facilitate peace talks aimed at achieving a ceasefire as soon as possible.

Xi also appeared to pledge China would remain neutral in the conflict saying Beijing “will neither watch the fire from the other side, nor add fuel to the fire, let alone take advantage of the crisis to profit”.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry was made aware of the announcement but didn’t appear to have much to say about it. Their spokesperson simply said that Russia “notes the readiness of the Chinese side to make efforts to establish a negotiation process.”

I’ve been dubious about China’s position in all of this from the beginning, but perhaps we shouldn’t write off the idea too quickly. China actually does have some leverage here, being Russia’s only powerful ally. Vladimir Putin can’t risk ticking off the Chinese too much or most of his remaining oil and gas markets could dry up overnight.

But what does China stand to gain by acting as the peacemaker in this conflict? For one thing, the war has disrupted the global supply chain which isn’t really good for anyone, including China. Further, Xi would win the gratitude of the Ukrainian government if he can put an end to the daily shelling and missile attacks. It would be a cruel bit of irony if the United States supplied almost all of the weapons and cash to keep Zelensky’s government afloat but they came out of this mess more closely aligned with China than us.

It remains unclear what the actual prospects for success are here. A cease-fire isn’t the same as a peace agreement and a full end to the war. What concessions will either side be able to make in good faith? The biggest hurdle will be the issue of where the borders are drawn. Zelensky has been talking about driving the Russians out of all of his territory, including the land Moscow seized in 2014. Meanwhile, Moscow dishonestly claimed to “annex” new territory in eastern Ukraine last year.

Will either side be willing to simply go back to the boundaries that existed prior to the invasion and just pretend this never happened? It seems as if Russia should be forced to pay some sort of reparations for all of the death and destruction that’s taken place. But Putin’s ego may simply be too big to swallow that sort of a pill.