President Zelenskyy has 'long and meaningful' call with China's Xi Jinping

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he and Chinese leader Xi Jinping had a "long and meaningful" phone call in their first contact since the start of the war.

The hour-long call came two months after Beijing said it wanted to act as a mediator to resolve the conflict.

Although China has not expressly backed Russia's war goals, they have refused to condemn the invasion and has become Moscow's most important partner since its complete alienation from the West.

Mr Zelenskyy was upbeat about the conversation, which offered him the chance to insert his views into what had been a bilateral dialogue between Moscow and Beijing.

"I believe that this call, as well as the appointment of Ukraine’s ambassador to China, will give a powerful impetus to the development of our bilateral relations," Mr Zelenskyy said on Facebook.

An official readout on his website called the conversation "productive" and said it leads the way toward "possible interaction with the aim of establishing a just and sustainable peace for Ukraine."

Mr Zelenskyy emphasised the need to regain all Ukrainian lands and stated: "There can be no peace at the expense of territorial compromises."

In an indirect reference to US reports that China had considered supplying weapons to Russia for its war, Mr Zelenskyy’s office said he asked countries to refrain from doing so because "any support - even partial - is converted by Russia into the continuation of its aggression, into its further rejection of peace."

China has said it won’t supply weapons to either side in the conflict.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Beijing’s "core stance is to facilitate talks for peace" and announced that an envoy - a former ambassador to Russia - would visit Ukraine to seek a "political settlement."

In China's readout of the call, they said: "Mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity is the political foundation of China-Ukraine relations.

"China’s readiness to develop relations with Ukraine is consistent and clear-cut. No matter how the international situation evolves, China will work with Ukraine to advance mutually beneficial cooperation."

Analysts have warned the call is unlikely to change China's stance.

Elizabeth Wishnick, of Columbia University’s Weatherhead East Asian Institute, said the Chinese statement about the call contains "no mention of a Russian troop withdrawal, which, to my mind, makes this a less than serious initiative and unlikely to contribute in any major way to ending the war, which will likely be decided on the battlefield."

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In Moscow, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova commended China’s approach, praising Beijing’s "readiness to strive to establish a (peace) negotiations process," while criticising Kyiv’s "rejection of any sound initiatives aimed at a settlement."

Talks between the two leaders had been anticipated for weeks, after China produced a 12-point proposal to end the fighting, although it did not contain details.

Also on Wednesday, Mr Zelenskyy used the 37th anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear disaster at Chornobyl to repeat his warnings about the threat of a new atomic catastrophe during his country’s war with Russia.

Mr Zelenskyy drew a parallel between the Chornobyl accident on April 26, 1986, to Moscow’s brief seizure of that plant and its radiation-contaminated exclusion zone following its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

"Last year, the occupier not only seized the (Chornobyl) nuclear power plant, but also endangered the entire world again," Zelenskyy said in a Telegram post in English.