China has proposed the most logical peace plan so far for resolving the conflict in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said.

Beijing had put forward a 12-point plan more than a year ago, which lays out the general principles for ending the war but does not go into details.

The Chinese peace plan was tepidly received at the time by Russia and Ukraine, while the United States had said that China presented itself as a peacemaker but reflected Russia’s “false narrative” and did not condemn its invasion.

“The most interesting thing for us is that the Chinese document is based on an analysis of the reasons for what is happening and the need to eliminate the causes of it. It is structured in a logical form, from the general to the specific,” Lavrov told reporters on Thursday (4/4), the state news agency RIA reported.

“This plan was widely vague… But this is a logical plan which the great Chinese civilization proposed for discussion,” he also said.

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Lavrov is due to meet his Chinese counterpart soon. For his part, President Putin had said in March that he was considering making his first foreign visit to China in his new six-year term.

Russia says it wants to start talks on Ukraine but this will have to respond to what it calls “new realities” on the ground, where its forces control a fifth of Ukraine and Moscow claims four regions as its own.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has proposed his own peace plan which calls for an end to hostilities and the complete withdrawal of Russia from all the occupied territories.

Moscow, while praising China’s peace plan, wants to show that it is open to peace talks, while attacking Zelensky’s peace initiative, whose plan Lavrov describes as “a menu from which you can take whatever you want”.

Switzerland has said it is ready to host a conference based on Zelensky’s peace plan, but Russia has called the initiative meaningless, saying it is doomed to fail without Moscow’s participation.