Boris Johnson has had a “frank and candid discussion” with China’s President Xi Jinping about the situation in Ukraine, Downing Street has said.
The call came after Nato leaders urged Beijing to “abstain” from supporting Russia’s war effort and to refrain from any actions that would help it circumvent sanctions.
In a terse readout following the 50-minute call, a No 10 spokesman said they had discussed “a range of issues of mutual interest” including the situation in Ukraine.
“It was a frank and candid conversation lasting almost an hour. They agreed to speak again soon,” the spokesman said.
In a statement following Thursday’s emergency Nato summit in Brussels, alliance leaders called on the Chinese government “to cease amplifying the Kremlin’s false narratives”.
They include unsubstantiated Russian claims – strongly denied by the US – that the United States is financing biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine.
A No 10 spokesman said: “Obviously, the Prime Minister has been talking with a lot of world leaders and quite regularly throughout the course of what has happened in Ukraine.
“This is part of the Prime Minister’s wider engagement with world leaders so he can set out our position on where we think the current situation is.”
US President Joe Biden, who spoke last week to Mr Xi, said he had pointed out that US and other foreign corporations were already pulling out of Russia because of President Putin’s “barbaric” behaviour.
“I made no threats, but I made sure he understood the consequences of him helping Russia,” Mr Biden told a news conference on Thursday at Nato headquarters.
“I think that China understands that its economic future is much more closely tied to the West than it is to Russia.”
It comes as UK intelligence suggested Ukrainian forces were driving the Russians back from around Kyiv.
The latest assessment from the Ministry of Defence said the Ukrainians were expected to continue to try to push the Russians away from the capital.
“Ukrainian counter-attacks, and Russian forces falling back on overextended supply lines, has allowed Ukraine to reoccupy towns and defensive positions up to 35 kilometres (22 miles) east of Kyiv,” it said.
In the south of the country, it said the Russian advance on the key Black Sea port city of Odesa was being slowed by “logistic issues and Ukrainian resistance”.
In the besieged city of Mariupol, the authorities said about 300 people died in a Russian airstrike earlier this month on a theatre where hundreds of people were sheltering.
If confirmed, it is likely to lead for renewed calls for Western powers to step up military support for the Ukrainian forces.
In an interview with BBC2’s Newsnight on Thursday, Mr Johnson praised their “Churchillian” leader Volodymyr Zelensky and said: “I think Ukraine can certainly win.”
“There’s a sense in which Putin has already failed or lost because I think that he had literally no idea that the Ukrainians were going to mount the resistance that they are, and he totally misunderstood what Ukraine is,” he said.
“And far from extinguishing Ukraine as a nation, he is solidifying it.”
However, Mr Johnson conceded it would be a challenge to give Mr Zelensky the tanks he has demanded to fight the Russian invaders.
The PM accepted Mr Zelensky wanted more from Nato, saying allies felt “agony” about their “inability to do more given the constraints we face”.
Nato leaders agreed on Thursday that Russia using chemical weapons would mark a “fundamental change” in the Ukrainian conflict that would be met with a “very severe response”.
However, a Western official declined to outline what the response would be, saying “we need to keep Putin guessing”.
Later, at a press conference, Mr Biden said there would be a “response in kind” but declined to spell out what that would involve.
“We would respond. We would respond if he uses it. The nature of the response would depend on the nature of the use,” he said.
Mr Johnson warned against allowing the threats over chemical, biological and nuclear weapons to become a “distraction”.
He said: “It’s intended to be a distraction from what is really going on and that is a savage attack with conventional means on innocent people in urban centres in Ukraine, absolutely barbaric use of artillery and mortars and rockets as I’ve described, thermobaric bombs included it now seems, that is what is going on.”
