The Russian-Ukraine war in Donbas as a challenge posed to Chinese diplomacy

The aim of this article is to analyse Beijing’s actions in the course of the conflict in the Eastern Ukraine in the period from the proclamation of two separatist republics (the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic) until reaching the cease& re agreement at Minsk in February 2015. This conflict is likely to be the worst security crisis in Europe since the war in Yugoslavia. The fundamental question now is: „is it possible to defuse this crisis without the participation of China?”. The PRC has been a close ally and partner of both Russia and the Ukraine, which poses a tough challenge for Chinese politicians and also put their readiness to get involved in the world’s politics to the test. The conflict in the Ukraine is quite recent and is still evolving and thus still requires a lot of studies. In Poland the & rst publications on this issue have only appeared recently. Economic and political relations between China and Russia are commonly known, but the knowledge of the importance of the Ukraine in China’s politics is still li mi ted, even among the Ukrainian scholars (despite the fact that it is supposed to be the destination of one of the Silk Route branches that travelling through Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and the Black Sea is to reach the Illichivsk harbour in the Ukraine). This essay, which is a continuation of previous researches on the relations between China, the Ukraine and Russia during the course of the Maidan protest and the subsequent annexation of the Crimea by the Russian Federation, intends to & ll this gap providing an analysis of the Chinese politics towards the war in the Eastern Ukraine