Ukraine held peace negotiations in Switzerland even though Russia was not invited

What is the value of peace negotiations that are not really negotiations between warring parties?

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine is expected to open a peace conference in Switzerland on Saturday aimed at bolstering support for his country’s negotiating positions with support from as many countries as possible. Good. Yet even as the two-day meeting has emerged as the most widely received diplomatic effort to date to end the war, it currently does not include Russia.

The conference, which took place at the Alpine resort near Lucerne, Switzerland, was instead a show of support for a number of points that Ukraine had made in its proposal and asserted were necessary to bring about peace. long lasting. This plan has faced criticism from some countries, such as China and Brazil, who say Russia and Ukraine need to negotiate directly to have a chance of ending the fighting.

“You don’t negotiate with your friends,” Celso Amorim, chief foreign policy adviser to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, said in an interview. “You negotiate with your opponent.”

Zelensky said that Ukraine’s intention is to negotiate jointly with Russia – after building a consensus among Kyiv’s allies and as many neutral countries as possible. Zelensky’s 10-point peace plan involves Russia withdrawing from Ukraine, paying reparations and facing justice for any war crimes.

On Friday, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia come up with its own ceasefire plan, called on Ukraine to cede territory and asked Western countries to lift economic sanctions. Ukraine denounced Mr. Putin’s proposal as an attempt to sabotage the weekend negotiations.

As Ukraine tries to build momentum for this year’s Swiss conference, it has pushed for a meeting that could endorse all 10 of its negotiating positions. But then they returned to three issues – nuclear safety, food security and humanitarian issues such as the exchange of prisoners of war and the return of Ukrainian children illegally taken to Russia – to attract the countries are reluctant to endorse points considered less feasible.

“We have escaped the difficulties that could divide the countries and we only won 3 points for the first summit,” Mr. Zelensky said in an interview with Central Asian media last month. fairy”.

Mr. Zelensky said Ukraine hopes to have consensus on three points and the conference is expected to present at least one draft on those issues. Once the points are agreed upon by the countries attending the meeting, he said, they will be passed on to Russia, possibly with the United Nations as an intermediary.

“After that, we will see whether Russia wants to end the war or not,” Mr. Zelensky said about diplomatic strategy in the country. an interview with the New York Times in Kiev last month.

Participants preparing for the conference said the question of how Russia and Ukraine could participate in future negotiations was expected to be one of the topics of discussion. Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, said Tuesday he hoped the conference would lay the groundwork for future negotiations with Russia.

Both Russia and Ukraine are now lobbying to win support from other countries for their preferred forms of negotiations should they come.

China and Brazil are backing a separate negotiating proposal and neither country is sending a high-level delegation to the Ukraine conference this weekend. Delegations from 100 countries and organizations, including 57 heads of state and government, are expected to attend, Switzerland said.

There have been failures. President Biden, who has traveled to Europe twice in recent weeks for the D-Day commemoration and the Group of 7 summit, will skip the gathering. Vice President Kamala Harris will attend instead.

The absence of China, the country with the strongest economic and diplomatic leverage over Russia, also casts doubt on the conference’s relevance.

And Brazil has avoided any high-level presence, although Mr. Amorim, the presidential adviser, is nonetheless near Geneva to attend a United Nations trade conference. Mr. Amorim said in the interview that peace talks without Russia’s participation are useless.

“I am not defending one side or the other, but first of all, I am very clear that nothing will come out of this meeting in Switzerland,” he said. “I respect my intentions but obviously nothing is going to happen.”

China said 45 countries “responded positively” to the negotiation proposal of Brazil and China, without naming the countries. Mr. Amorim said he did not have precise information on how many or which countries supported the conditions, but he noted the participation of China, as the country with the greatest influence on Russia. , is the key factor.

Ukraine has rejected such talks.

Türkiye, another country seeking to mediate between Russia and Ukraine, will be represented by Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who met Putin at the Kremlin on Tuesday.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman said the Turks considered the talks with Switzerland important, but he added: “However, a conference with Russia’s participation would have a chance of success higher”.

Oleksii Polegkyi, academic director of the Center for Public Diplomacy in Ukraine, told Ukrainian television on Thursday that Kyiv’s strategy for the summit would likely be a diplomatic mistake.

The meeting could end without a statement affirming Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders, he said, an absence that could allow territorial concessions to be pulled in a final settlement before a trade-off. anything from Russia.

In any case, he said, “our expectations about this summit may be a bit excessive, because peace will not be achieved through summits.”

But Maria Zolkina, director of conflict research at the Foundation for Democracy Initiative, a nongovernmental group, said the value for Ukraine of the diplomacy surrounding this meeting is broader than just the political effort. formula to increase support for three points in Kyiv’s peace plan.

The effort is helping advance Ukraine’s vision of a post-war order in Eastern Europe that would deter future Russian expansionism, she said, adding that Ukraine wants to mobilize support for negotiations on its own terms, “not starting from China’s, Russia’s or anyone else’s proposals. ”

Maria Varenikova Contributing reports from Kiev, and Safak Timur from Istanbul. Anastasia Kuznietsova also contributed reporting.