GENEVA — The presidents of Ecuador, Ivory Coast, Kenya and Somalia will join many Western heads of state, government and other leaders at a conference this weekend aimed at charting 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 join the conference. meeting at Bürgenstock station overlooking Lake Lucerne. About 100 delegations will be present, including European organizations and the United Nations.
Who will show up – and who will not – has become one of the key stakes of a meeting that critics say will be useless without the presence of the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and is moving forward with war.
vice president of the united states Kamala Harris is ready to attend while Türkiye 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 lower levels.
China, which backs Russia, joins dozens of countries not participating in the conference, many of which have more pressing issues than the bloodiest conflict in distant Europe since World War II. Beijing says any peace process must involve both Russia and Ukraine, and has raised your own ideas for peace.
Zelenskyy recently led a diplomatic push to attract participants.
Russian troops who now control almost a quarter of Ukrainian territory in the east and south have made some territorial gains in recent months. When talk of a Swiss-sponsored peace initiative began last summer, Ukrainian forces had recently recaptured large swaths of territory, especially near the southern cities of Kherson and northern Kharkiv.
In the context of the battlefield and diplomatic strategies, summit organizers have put three topics on the agenda: nuclear security, such as at the Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia power plant; humanitarian assistance and exchange of prisoners of war; and global food security, which has at times been disrupted due to obstacles to shipping through the Black Sea.
That to-do list, which summarizes some of the less controversial issues, falls far short of the proposals and hopes laid out by Zelenskyy in a 10-point peace formula by the end of 2022.
Putin’s government, meanwhile, wants any peace deal to be built around a draft agreement negotiated in the early phases of the war that included provisions for Ukraine’s neutral status and limits on its armed forces, while delaying talks on Russian-occupied areas. Ukraine’s push over the years to join the NATO military alliance has irritated Moscow.
While much of the world’s attention has recently focused on the war in Gaza and the 2024 national elections, Ukraine supporters want to refocus on Russia’s violation of international law and the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity .
The International Crisis Group, an advisory firm working to end the conflict, wrote this week that “in the absence of a major surprise at Bürgenstock,” the event is “unlikely to have much consequence.”
“Nevertheless, the Swiss summit is an opportunity for Ukraine and its allies to underline what the UN General Assembly recognized in 2022 and repeated in its February 2023 resolution on a just peace in Ukraine: Russia’s all-out aggression is a flagrant violation of international law. “she said.
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