Nobody in Jeddah in August 2023 pretended the meeting was a negotiation. Senior officials from approximately 40 countries met in Saudi Arabia to work on principles for ending the war in Ukraine, and Russia was not in the room. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow would watch, adding that “Any attempt to promote a peaceful settlement deserves a positive evaluation.”
That is one of several efforts, from Istanbul to a Swiss mountain resort, that have tried to get Kyiv and Moscow to a settlement. Each had a different host and a different weakness.
Istanbul, March 2022
Turkey mediated the earliest serious round. On March 29, 2022, Ukrainian and Russian delegations met in Istanbul, where Ukraine tabled a proposal resting on “permanent Ukrainian neutrality and international security guarantees.” It would have settled Crimea’s status over fifteen years, with other disputes left to a presidential summit.
The SWP institute in Berlin, in a paper dated November 8, 2022, said the talks fell apart over two things. Russia would not discuss Crimea and wanted Donetsk and Luhansk recognized as independent states. The two sides also could not agree on Russia’s part in any security guarantee. Bucha and Irpin finished the job: “public support for a compromise with Russia evaporated,” SWP wrote.
Jeddah and Beijing
Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude oil exporter and a close partner of Russia on energy policy, has cast itself as a possible go-between. The Jeddah meeting followed informal talks Ukraine organized in Copenhagen in June 2023, which ended without any official statement. China sent Special Envoy Li Hui. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that food security was the reason developing countries mattered at the table: “the fate of millions of people in Africa, Asia and other parts of the world directly depends on how fast the world moves to implement the peace formula.”
China’s own contribution came earlier. On February 24, 2023, Beijing published a 12-point position paper calling for a ceasefire and negotiations, an end to Western sanctions on Russia, humanitarian corridors and a restart of grain exports. Zelenskyy said he was open to working with China. His adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said any real plan had to include the “withdrawal of Russian troops to the borders of 1991.”
Western officials were unconvinced. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said China “has not been able to condemn the illegal invasion.” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said China had “taken sides” by signing an unlimited friendship pact with Russia before the war. Nicholas Bequelin of Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center called it “not a plan” but a statement of principles.
Bürgenstock, June 2024
Leaders from more than 70 countries were due at Switzerland’s Bürgenstock resort on June 15 and 16, 2024. Putin was not invited, and Russia dismissed the gathering as pointless without it. A day earlier, on June 14, he restated his demands: Ukrainian troops out of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhya, no NATO membership for Kyiv, demilitarization and relief from sanctions.
Podolyak rejected them on the spot. “There is no novelty in this, no real peace proposal, and no desire to end the war,” he said. Stoltenberg said the terms meant “more aggression, more occupation.”
Sources
- Peace Talks Between Russia and Ukraine: Mission Impossible (SWP Berlin)
- China's Plan for Russia-Ukraine Talks (Al Jazeera)
- Saudi Arabia Kicks Off Ukraine Talks That Exclude Russia (Al Jazeera)
- Putin Lays Out Already Rejected Conditions For Talks On Eve Of Ukraine Peace Summit (RFE/RL)
