Geopolitics
Key Ukrainian Minister Losing His Position. Will He Become an Ambassador to China?
An interesting reshuffling took place in the Ukrainian power structure. The former head of the State Customs who then became the Minister of Strategic Industry has been dismissed. Reportedly, he was assigned a diplomatic posting in China.
As the war is going on, the Ministry of Strategic Industry remains one of the key organs, as it manages the Ukroboronprom defence group, which transformed into a company named Ukrainian Defence Industry. Pavlo Riabikin took over the Ministry in November 2021. He is an experienced state official. Earlier on he had been working at Verkhovna Rada, he was the head of State Customs, deputy head at the Ministry of Transport, and served as the Ukrainian Ambassador in Denmark.
In the future, he expects to return to his diplomatic duties. Riabkin is expected to become the Ukrainian ambassador to China. This is a time-wise interesting change since Xi Jinping and Beijing have begun an intense geopolitical campaign related to the war. Xi's visit to Moscow was focused on the so-called Chinese peacekeeping plan, the conditions of which were approved by Putin. Kyiv does not want China to start a war alliance with Russia, while the peace plan proposed by Beijing shall not be one-sided.
The Chinese peacekeeping plan is quite general in its nature, but the Russian interpretation may be dangerous:
- Respect for the sovereignty of all nations.
- Leaving the Cold War mentality behind.
- Ceasefire.
- Restart of the peace talks.
- Resolving of the humanitarian crisis.
- Protection of civilians and POWs.
- Maintaining the safety of nuclear power plants.
- Limiting the strategic risks.
- Facilitating grain exports.
- Stoppage of one-sided sanctions.
- Maintaining the stability of industrial and supply chains.
- Support for the post-conflict recovery.