MOSCOW, April 26. /TASS/. Moscow has taken note of Beijing’s willingness to make efforts to launch a negotiation process on the Ukraine issue but Kiev is unlikely to appreciate calls for peace, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement on Wednesday.

"We have taken note of China’s willingness to make efforts to launch a negotiation process. We can see that our fundamental approaches are in line with the position paper that the Chinese Foreign Ministry released on February 24," she said, commenting on a phone call between Presidents Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Zelensky of Ukraine.

"So far, the Kiev regime has been rejecting all reasonable initiatives aimed at finding a political and diplomatic solution to the Ukrainian crisis," Zakharova added.

The diplomat noted that the Ukrainian authorities and their Western sponsors had already made it clear how they could put peace initiatives on the back burner. "By their own admission, they only needed the Minsk Accords to buy time and increase offensive capabilities. In the spring of 2022, they suddenly rejected the peace agreements that the parties were about to reach at Kiev’s initiative. Vladimir Zelensky even signed a law to ban any talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. That said, Washington’s puppets are unlikely to appreciate any calls for peace," the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman emphasized.

She also noted that Communist ideas and the Communist Party were officially banned in Ukraine, while Head of the Verkhovna Rada’s (parliament) Committee on International Affairs Alexander Merezhko had recently claimed that the international community’s recognition of Taiwan as part of China was "a Communist misconception."

The presidents of China and Ukraine held a telephone conversation earlier on Wednesday. Zelensky said on Twitter that the call had been "long and meaningful." He last communicated with the Chinese leader in early January 2022.