Negotiations are still underway among key parties over the "peace plan" recently proposed by the United States to resolve the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Thursday reiterated Moscow's position that Ukraine must remain neutral, non-aligned, and non-nuclear -- a consensus he said was reached between Russian and U.S. leaders during their meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, in August.
Lavrov stressed that negotiations remain the best option for resolving the Ukraine issue from Russia's perspective, adding that Moscow is still waiting for the outcome of discussions among Ukraine, the EU, and the U.S.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that Ukraine had handed the United States a revised 20-point peace plan, but significant divergences between the two sides remain.
The U.S. side proposed that Ukrainian forces withdraw from the Donetsk region, while the Ukrainian side insists that Russia and Ukraine should carry out troop withdrawals on the principle of reciprocity. Zelensky also reiterated that any territorial decisions to end the conflict must be made by the Ukrainian people, either through elections or a national referendum.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced Thursday that European leaders had submitted a proposal to U.S. President Donald Trump concerning the Russia-Ukraine peace plan.
Merz emphasized that any negotiated settlement must safeguard European security interests and must not come at the expense of the unity of the European Union and NATO.
Russia highlights neutrality, denuclearization amid Ukraine-US divergence on peace plan
Attempts to curb China's scientific and technological advancement are futile, a fact that has already been proven, said Kishore Mahbubani, former permanent representative of Singapore to the United Nations, in an interview aired Friday.
In an exclusive interview with China Central Television (CCTV) in Beijing, Mahbubani said he had stated this position in one of his articles published in the United States.
"Actually, I published an article, you know the two, I guess two leading journals in the United States on international relations. One is Foreign Affairs and the other is Foreign Policy. And last year I co-authored an article with two other co-authors, saying that all the efforts to stop China's scientific and technological development will fail. And it has failed always. You know, for example, the Soviet Union tried to prevent the spread of nuclear technology to China, China develops its own. The United States didn't want to share its technology on international space station with China. China develops its own space station. So clearly, efforts to stop China in the area of scientific innovation and technological development have failed. And so it'd be wiser for the West, including United States, to work with China other than to try and stop China seek development," he said.
Regarding China's progress on robots, Mahbubani said China is leading the world in the sector and hopes the country will share its expertise with the rest of the world.
"If there's one country that is preparing for the future well, it is China, because one in six human beings in the world is Chinese. But one in three robots in the world is Chinese, and one in two baby robots being born every day is Chinese. So China is producing far more robots than any other country is. So clearly it's preparing for the world of the future when we will have, for example, labor shortages, as you know, as you develop an aging society. So China is wisely investing in robots. But I hope that China will also share its learning and expertise with other countries. Also because the robots like that can also be helpful even to developing countries cause you can enhance the productivity of their populations, of their factories and so on so forth. So the world should be happy that China is leading the world in manufacturing, producing robots," he said.
Attempts to stop China's sci-tech development doomed to fail: former Singaporean diplomat
