Russia absent from the meeting of world leaders in the Swiss resort for peace talks in Ukraine
China, which backs Russia, joins a host of countries not attending the conference. (Photo: Shutterstock)
The presidents of Ecuador, Ivory Coast, Kenya and Somalia will join many Western heads of state, government and other leaders this weekend at a conference aimed at taking the first steps toward peace in Ukraine, with Russia notably absent.
Swiss officials hosting the conference say more than 50 heads of state and government, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will attend the meeting at the Brgenstock resort overlooking Lake Lucerne. About 100 delegations, including European agencies and the United Nations, will be present.
Who will show up and who won’t has become one of the main focuses of a meeting that critics say will be useless without the presence of the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and continues the war.
US Vice President Kamala Harris will attend as Turkey and Saudi Arabia have sent their foreign ministers. Key developing countries such as Brazil, an observer at the event, India and South Africa will be represented at a lower level.
China, which backs Russia, joins a host of countries not attending the conference. Many of them have more pressing problems than the bloodiest conflict in deep Europe since World War II. Beijing says any peace process needs the participation of both Russia and Ukraine, and has put forward its own ideas for peace.
Zelenskyy recently led a diplomatic effort to attract participants.
Russian forces, who now control almost a quarter of Ukrainian land in the east and south, have made some territorial gains in recent months. Amid talk of a Swiss-organized peace initiative last summer, Ukrainian forces had recently retaken large parts of their territory, particularly near the towns of southern Kherson and northern Kharkiv.
Against the backdrop of the battlefield and diplomatic strategy, the summit’s organizers presented three agenda items: nuclear security, such as that of the Russian-controlled nuclear power plant in Zaporizhia; humanitarian aid and prisoner of war exchanges; and global food security, which has sometimes been disrupted by obstructed transport through the Black Sea.
That to-do list, which includes some of the least controversial issues, falls far short of the proposals and hopes Zelenskyy laid out in a 10-point peace formula at the end of 2022.
Putin’s government, meanwhile, wants any peace deal to be built around a draft agreement negotiated in the early stages of the war that includes provisions on Ukraine’s neutral status and limits on its armed forces, while delaying talks on Russian-occupied territories . Ukraine’s attempts to join the NATO military alliance over the years have rankled Moscow.
With much of the world’s attention lately focused on the war in Gaza and the 2024 national elections, Ukraine’s supporters want to refocus attention on Russia’s violation of international law and on restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity .
The International Crisis Group, a consultancy that works to end conflict, wrote this week that unless there is a major surprise at the Brgenstock, the event is unlikely to have much impact.
Nevertheless, the Swiss summit is an opportunity for Ukraine and its allies to underline what the UN General Assembly recognized and reiterated in 2022 in its February 2023 resolution on a just peace in Ukraine: Russia’s total aggression is a blatant violation of international law. it said.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
First print: June 15, 2024 | 4:29 pm IST