The night before, I told my wife that western leaders would immediately dismiss it.  Sadly, that is precisely what happened.  Of course any peace plan proposed by China was not going to be perfect.  But for the good of humanity our leaders should be willing to at least sit down and talk with the Russians.  Because if we stay on the path that we are currently on, eventually somebody will use nuclear weapons.  And once things go nuclear, we could be facing a nightmare scenario in which hundreds of millions of people die.

This is not a game.

At some point, peace talks may become impossible.  So if we have an opportunity to talk now, we should grab it.

But instead, our leaders made it abundantly clear that they aren't even interested in considering China's peace plan…

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, speaking on CNN, brushed off the Chinese proposal, saying it should have ended after the first bullet point, which calls for "respecting the sovereignty of all countries."

"This war could end tomorrow, if Russia stopped attacking Ukraine and withdrew its forces," he said.

Asked about the proposal, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, "China doesn't have much credibility" in light of its failure to condemn Putin's war.

And Volodymyr Zelensky is completely rejecting the idea of ever negotiating with Vladimir Putin…

The Ukrainian president has repeatedly rejected the idea of negotiating a peace deal that would see Ukraine lose any of its territory. Speaking on Friday, he said he would not negotiate with Putin – even though he was prepared to speak to him before the war started.

"It is not the same man. There is nobody to talk to there," he said.