On June 15 and 16, Switzerland will be hosting a high-level international summit on peace in Ukraine, to which delegations from some 160 states have been invited. The event will take place at the picturesque Bürgenstock resort, located near Lake Lucerne in central Switzerland. Preparations for the summit have been in progress for quite some time, and the Swiss hosts have been working closely with the Ukrainian side to ensure the participation of a significant number of heads of state and government from all over the world.
As indicated on the website of President of Ukraine, the main objective of the summit is to provide “a platform for dialogue on ways to achieve a comprehensive, just, and lasting peace for Ukraine in accordance with the UN Charter and the norms of international law,” and to develop “a framework for the achievement of this goal.” The summit, originally initiated by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, has the potential of becoming an important stepping stone on the long and winding path towards peace in Ukraine. Judging from Zelensky’s many recent interactions with foreign colleagues, his hope is to build some form of international consensus on what a peace process should look like, what principles it should be based on, and how Russia may be involved in the process.
Zelensky’s Foreign Minister, Dmytro Kuleba, explained in a recent interview that “there are only two ways to bring Russia to a situation where it will act in good faith. The first one is success on the battlefield, and the second one is having a coalition of countries who share the same principles and the same approaches.” According to Kuleba, the latter point is also the main reason why the upcoming summit in Switzerland does not include Russia. This is not to say that the Ukrainian Foreign Minister excludes the possibility of direct communications and negotiations with Russia at a later stage. “In the end,” he said, “it is impossible to end the war without the participation of both sides.”
The primary point of departure for the Ukrainian side seems to be the 10-point peace plan which was presented by president Zelensky at the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia in November 2022. The plan places strong emphasis on the need to restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity and the country’s internationally recognized state borders. Zelensky’s peace plan also calls for the withdrawal of all Russian forces from the territory of Ukraine, the establishment of a special tribunal to prosecute Russian war crimes, and the issuance of guarantees against future Russian aggression.
Beyond the immediate issues relating to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, the Zelensky plan also calls for measures to address issues such as radiation and nuclear safety, energy and power infrastructure security, and international food security, including measures to ensure continued Ukrainian grain supplies to some of the world’s poorest nations. Ukraine has repeatedly called on countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia to take a clear stand against Putin’s war of aggression, which has had, and will continue to have, repercussions well beyond the European continent.
Fearing increased political isolation, Russia has in the past few weeks taken a series of measures to derail diplomatic preparations for the Swiss summit and create the impression that it is “open for dialogue” on Ukraine. The Russian Foreign Ministry has in various ways discouraged other countries from participating in the summit and actively tried to undermine its authority and credibility. Foreign Minister Lavrov has, for instance, labeled Switzerland “an openly hostile state” and done everything in his power to question the country’s credibility as a neutral broker.
What, then, is Russia’s plan for bringing the war in Ukraine to a halt? In short, Ukraine will have to accept the territorial gains that Russia has made since the start of the invasion, commit to “permanent neutrality”, and de facto demilitarize. Seen from a Ukrainian perspective, such an outcome would be little short of a full surrender. Russia’s current position on the issue of negotiations seems to be rooted in the dead-ended bilateral talks that took place shortly after the start of the full-scale invasion, between March and May 2022. These are often referred to as the “Istanbul talks”.
In the spring of 2022, Ukraine was negotiating from a position of military weakness, given Russia territorial advances in the first weeks of the conflict. How close the parties really were to reaching a negotiated settlement at this point in time, and whether the Ukrainians were seriously contemplating a humiliating negotiated settlement, as argued by Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko, is still a matter of debate. What is clear, however, is that Ukraine never officially agreed to the Russian proposals. The Ukrainian side abandoned the peace talks with Russia in May 2022. By that time, Ukraine had made significant battlefield gains and liberated most of northern Ukraine. Western military aid was also on the increase, which apparently reinforced Ukraine’s hopes of regaining more of its occupied territory. On top of this, the uncovering of Russia’s horrific war crimes in Bucha, Irpin, and other places lead to a hardening of Ukraine’s stance on the issue of peace talks with Russia.
In the second half of May this year, President Putin made a series of public statements outlining Russia’s preconditions for ending or pausing the war in Ukraine. As summarized by Vladimir Socor, the Russian preconditions were:
- To proceed from the draft agreements discussed by Moscow and Kyiv between March and May 2022 as the basis for negotiations;
- To recognize the “facts on the ground” that have taken shape since then—that is, Russia keeps its territorial gains in Ukraine; and
- No ceasefire until Kyiv consents to Moscow’s terms of settlement, knowing that these would not bring peace and stability to Ukraine.
To put it mildly, these preconditions are unlikely to ever be accepted by the Ukrainian side. Ukraine is essentially being asked to accept not only the Russian demands that it rejected in May 2022 (neutrality, non-alignment, demilitarization, restrictions on foreign arms deliveries etc.), but also the territorial gains that Russia has made since (and before) the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022. On top of this, Russia aims to establish a demilitarized cordon sanitaire in Ukraine’s northern and northeastern border regions, on the Ukrainian side of the current line of contact, to protect Russian or Russian-occupied territories from Ukrainian missile or drone strikes.
At present, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine plays out on two arenas – the military and the diplomatic. The two belligerents have widely diverging views of what a negotiated settlement should look like and how it may be accomplished. Both countries are working hard to enlist support for their respective visions of how the conflict may be brought to an end. Militarily, the initiative is currently on Russia’s side. Russian forces have made some tactical gains in the east and northeast, but they are unable to turn them into potentially significant strategic advances. Diplomatically, Ukraine seems to be the one holding the initiative. With a few notable exceptions, the international community is massively on Ukraine’s side, and the pressure on Russia to end its war of aggression is building.
The upcoming peace summit in Switzerland is likely to become a reflection of the world community’s willingness to get involved in the efforts to work out a road map toward peace in Ukraine and address the multifaceted security concerns that the war has created in and beyond Europe. So far, some 106 countries have indicated that they will participate. A significant number of them will send their heads of state or government. The United States has promised to send a high-level representative and is actively encouraging others to attend. Russia has, as noted above, not been invited, and China has recently informed that it will not be attending the event. The news of China’s non-participation is presumably well received in Moscow. It is apparently also a source of disappointment for Zelensky, who has long tried to get China more actively involved in the search for peace in Ukraine.
Kristian Åtland is a Senior Research Fellow at the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) and Adjunct Professor of Political Science at Nord University.
