Ukraine welcomes China’s offer to ‘help’ Trump end war with Russia

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s top advisor praised President Trump for courting China to “help” end the Russia-Ukraine war — as some experts and European officials urged caution in taking Beijing at its word.

Andriy Yermak, the head of the presidential office in Ukraine, told The Post he supported Trump’s efforts to bring in Chinese President Xi Jinping to lean on Moscow.

“First of all, it’s great that this meeting has happened,” Yermak said.  “… Maybe with this, starting this dialog, we will see China give Russia a strong push to end the war.”

“Volodya, enough. Everybody is tired of you,” he added, using the diminutive of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s first name.

Trump huddled with Xi for the first time during his second term in South Korea as the world’s two largest powers discussed potential joint efforts to stop the conflict that has dragged on for more than three years.

“The sides are, you know, locked in fighting, and sometimes you have to let them fight, I guess — crazy,” Trump said of the cooperation. “But [Xi’s] going to help us, and we’re going to work together on Ukraine.”

The president said the Ukraine-related discussion focused largely on finding a path to peace — not on his sanctions on Russian oil or Beijing’s energy ties to Moscow. He did not disclose further details of how the US and China could team up to end the war

Trump this month levied sanctions on Russia’s top two state-owned oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil. Still, Beijing remains the largest purchaser of Russian energy.

One of the most helpful ways China could end the war, one European official said, would be to stop purchasing Russian oil — which Trump has called the main source of funding for Russia’s “war machine.”

However, Trump said he and Xi’s conversation had little to do with his sanctions on Russian energy.

“He’s been buying oil from Russia for a long time. It takes care of a big part of China,” Trump said. “And, you know, I can say India has been very good on that front. But we didn’t really discuss the oil. We discussed working together to see if we could get that war finished.”

The president also emphasized that the conversation with Xi stayed narrowly focused on Ukraine, saying that even Beijing’s claims over Taiwan — which Xi considers his top priority — never entered the discussion.

“For the most part, we discussed something — we’re going to work together to try and get the war with Russia and Ukraine solved,” Trump said. “Taiwan never came up, not discussed.”

China has long been partners with Russia, and Xi’s influence on Putin has been discussed as a potential point of leverage worth tapping into, even dating back to the Biden administration. However, any motivations for Beijing wanting the conflict to end have been unclear.

Some insiders expressed skepticism over whether China would follow through on its apparent pledge to help Trump stop the war, given Beijing and Moscow’s alignment.

“China has a stake in Russia ‘winning’ the war,” one European official told The Post. “They benefit from Putin continuing on.”

China has publicly remained neutral in the war, but privately supplied Russia with dual-use items that can be deployed for military purposes in its war on Ukraine — as well as military intelligence on Ukrainian targets for Moscow to strike with missiles, Kyiv has said.

“China is supporting Russia’s war effort with material and intelligence support,” said George Barros, Russia team lead at the Institute for the Study of War. “China also benefits from US defense bandwidth being spread thinner by having to deal with a war in Europe, complicating Washington’s long-desired ‘pivot to Asia.’”

What’s more, China is ideologically aligned with Russia in its pursuit of claiming sovereign land, making Russia stopping its fight and going home far less geopolitically advantageous for Beijing than supporting their aims, Barros said.

“Beijing is invested in Russia winning the war in Ukraine in part to normalize wars of conquest against democratic states so China can benefit for its own aims in Asia,” he said, alluding to Beijing’s aims to take over Taiwan.

John Hardie, Russia program director at the Foundation for Defending Democracy, also doubted China’s willingness to help end the war.

“I don’t see China helping in any real way,” he said. “Not much to gain, but a lot to lose.”

But Trump, who has repeatedly expressed frustration over the human toll of the war, said the effort was about ending the bloodshed, not about profit or politics.

“It doesn’t affect China. It doesn’t affect us. And I’d like to see it done on that basis,” he said. “I don’t like to see six-, seven-, eight-thousand young people, mostly young people — for the most part soldiers — be killed.

“It’s not costing us anything. In fact, we make money. And I don’t even want to talk about making money. I don’t care about making money in that case.”

Trump’s remarks come as Beijing seeks to position itself as a potential mediator in the conflict, while Washington continues its sales of Western military aid to NATO, which is then passed on to Ukraine.

A coordinated push by both capitals to end the war would mark a geopolitical shift — though Trump offered no specifics on what form that cooperation might take.

Still, Trump’s comments signaled a potential thaw between Washington and Beijing amid years of rising tensions — and a possible new chapter in the effort to bring peace to Europe’s deadliest war in decades.