On February 28, 2022, in the first days of the full-scale invasion, Ukrainian and Russian delegations sat down together in Homyel, Belarus. It was the first meeting of its kind. More rounds followed in Istanbul through March, though New Eastern Europe judged that “no concrete results were achieved beyond attempts to organize humanitarian corridors.”
What the Istanbul drafts said
The fuller picture only emerged later. In June 2024 the New York Times published draft agreements dating from March 17 to April 15, 2022. Participants in the talks and people close to them confirmed they were genuine, according to New Eastern Europe, though neither government acknowledged the papers.
Kyiv’s position in those drafts was constitutional neutrality, with NATO membership given up but a path to the EU kept open. It would accept Crimea’s occupation de facto, without recognising it in law, and agree to limits on its military short of full disarmament.
Security guarantees were where the talks snagged. The framework named the United States, China, the United Kingdom, France and Russia as guarantors that would help if Ukraine were attacked. Moscow wanted decisions among them taken by consensus, which would have handed it a veto. Force levels were the other sticking point. Kyiv offered numbers close to what its armed forces actually had in early 2022. Russia asked for 85,000 personnel, 342 tanks, a cut of nearly 85 per cent in some categories of weapons and a missile range capped at 40 kilometres.
The peace formula and the Swiss summit
In November 2022 Ukraine put forward its own plan at the G20 summit. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s ten points covered nuclear safety, food security, energy security, the release of prisoners and deportees, restoration of territorial integrity, withdrawal of Russian troops, justice, protection of the environment, avoiding escalation and a formal end to the war. On February 23, 2023, the UN General Assembly passed a related resolution with 141 votes in favour.
Gatherings in Copenhagen in June 2023 and Jeddah in August 2023 tried to turn the formula into practice. Participants signed communiques on nuclear safety and prisoner exchanges, but Moscow took no steps in response.
The next was a Global Peace Summit on June 15-16, 2024, at the Burgenstock resort near Lucerne. Swiss authorities said there was “sufficient international support for a high-level conference to start the peace process.” Russia was not invited and had said it would not come anyway, arguing that Switzerland had abandoned neutrality. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the Ukrainian plan “impossible to implement.”
By May 27, 2024, about 80 countries had confirmed attendance, Bloomberg reported. President Biden was expected to skip it for a campaign fundraiser, and Beijing had not said who it would send. Zelensky publicly urged both Biden and Xi to “show their leadership in advancing the peace.” The EU, Bloomberg added, was already weighing a follow-up meeting in Saudi Arabia in autumn that Russian representatives could attend.
Sources
- The hunt for peace: unsuccessful attempts to mediate Ukrainian-Russian peace from 2022 to 2026
- Ukrainian peace summit set to be held in Switzerland in June
- Bloomberg: EU wants to follow up peace summit with meeting with Russian participation
