Saudi Arabia is hosting an unusual gathering of top security officials from some 30 nations, including the United States, for a Ukraine-led summit this weekend to discuss potential pathways toward negotiations to end Russia’s occupation of Ukrainian territory.
The catch is Russia isn’t invited to the gathering. Analysts say talks are likely to anchor around Ukrainian and U.S. efforts to persuade key nonaligned countries from the so-called Global South to publicly back Kyiv’s position on peace talks.
China, which has offered rhetorical support for the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin and has unsuccessfully pushed its peace initiative in recent months, is among the countries sending representatives to the Saudi city of Jeddah. India, another major power that has hedged its bets in the nearly 18-month-old war, said Wednesday that it would attend.
Regional experts say Saudi Arabia is using the meeting to underscore its rising status as a global diplomatic broker. The gathering will mark the second time in as many months that various nations have discussed a 10-point peace plan that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy put forward late last year.
The Zelenskyy government held a meeting in June in Copenhagen, Denmark, that received limited media attention.
Officials say discussions in Jeddah on Saturday and Sunday will focus again on Kyiv’s specific “peace formula.” In similar fashion to the Copenhagen gathering, nations that have waffled over the past year on open support for Ukraine are slated to attend.
“This meeting will be about wooing this group of ambivalent nations,” said Donald Jensen, a former U.S. diplomat and member of the Russia and Strategic Stability project at the United States Institute of Peace.
“I suspect that NATO and the West want to lobby this group to support Ukraine,” he said in an interview, noting that “the West does not want negotiations to occur on Russian terms.”
Officials from European Union nations and NATO supporters of Ukraine are heading to Jeddah, along with delegations from Egypt, Chile and several African nations that have had close relations with Russia. Nations from the Group of 20 industrial and emerging-market nations, including India, Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey and Japan, also will participate in the talks.
The event comes at a moment of uncertainty over the future of a Ukrainian counteroffensive that has made incremental gains against dug-in Russian forces along a 600-mile front line stretching across the nation’s east and south.
U.S. and NATO officials have publicly defended the counteroffensive, which has moved at a much slower rate than Kyiv and its supporters had hoped.
Watching from the sidelines
Russian officials say they will closely monitor the summit in Saudi Arabia. They said it was Ukraine that made it clear that representatives from Moscow would not be welcome.
“Of course, Russia will follow this meeting,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. “We need to understand what goals are set and what will be discussed. Any attempt to promote a peaceful settlement deserves a positive evaluation.”
Mr. Peskov restated Moscow’s position that it saw no grounds for peace talks with Kyiv. Mr. Putin launched the war in February 2022 in hopes of a quick capitulation of the Zelenskyy government, but he now finds himself bogged down in trench warfare trying to preserve modest Russian territorial gains in eastern Ukraine.
“The Kyiv regime does not want and cannot want peace as long as it is used exclusively as a tool in the war of the collective West with Russia,” Mr. Peskov said on a call with reporters, according to the Reuters news agency.
The comments fit with past Russian statements in response to separate peace initiatives, including one put forward by the Chinese in March and another by the Vatican in May. While Mr. Putin has more recently expressed guarded openness toward an African initiative, he has blamed Ukraine for undermining the diplomatic track while the Kremlin has shown no sign of willingness to give back Ukrainian territory occupied by Russian forces.
Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of Russia in Global Affairs magazine, told the Russian publication Izvestia this week that he expected little practical impact from the Saudi gathering, but the symbolism could boost Kyiv’s leverage.
“If we are talking about political signals, they will of course be sent; that’s perfectly natural,” Mr. Lukyanov said. “Ukraine, as one of the main organizers of the summit, is trying to show that Russia allegedly lacks serious international support, especially from a number of countries outside of the Western bloc.”
The head of Ukraine’s presidential office, Andriy Yermak, said in a statement this week that “the Ukrainian Peace Formula contains 10 fundamental points” and “should be taken as a basis, because the war is taking place on our land.”
Ukrainian officials have said their plan includes the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, the withdrawal of Russian troops, the release of all prisoners, a tribunal for those responsible for the aggression and security guarantees for Ukraine — effectively a complete repudiation of Russia’s stated war goals.
The Biden administration, which is sending National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to the Saudi summit, has openly favored a gradual increase of U.S. and NATO military aid for Ukraine over the prospect of pushing for a cease-fire or peace negotiations. U.S. officials have repeatedly said they would support a final peace deal only if it is acceptable to the Zelenskyy government.
Gathering support
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller suggested that the Jeddah gathering is an effort to persuade as wide a slate of nations as possible to align against Russia’s invasion.
“It’s important that countries around the world hear directly from Ukraine about the horrors that have been unleashed on their country — about the attacks on civilians, about the attacks on schools, on hospitals, on apartment buildings and civilian infrastructure — that they hear about just how Russia has violated their territorial integrity, violated their sovereignty,” Mr. Miller told reporters.
“If at some point Russia is willing to engage in meaningful diplomacy, I will not speak on behalf of … the president of Ukraine, but he has made clear in the past that he’d be willing to engage with them on such matters.”
Although some in the national security community say the U.S. administration lacks a clear strategy for the war’s endgame, many analysts credit President Biden for rallying international support to counter Russia’s military aggression.
“Biden has done a good job on supporting Ukraine,” said Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank. He said the White House should continue to hold the line.
“I would encourage the administration and others to avoid applying pressure to Ukraine to make any concessions when Ukraine is experiencing the equivalent of a home invasion,” Mr. Bowman said in an interview. “When your neighbor is [being invaded] by a thug, you don’t say to your neighbor, ‘You really should make some concessions.’ No, you pass a baseball bat to your neighbor to try to help them beat back the invader because if you don’t, your home might be next.”
Mr. Bowman said it could be easy to take a cynical view of the Jeddah summit, given that Russia will not be attending and there are questions with regard to the extent to which China will be participating.
“But if one studies diplomatic history, there are lots of meetings to facilitate meetings,” he said. “And in the end, this summit might be that. … The main benefit might be setting conditions for something that might follow later and might be more productive.”
Mr. Jensen was more circumspect.
“At this point, you have three peace plans. The Chinese one that went nowhere, the Vatican one that went nowhere and now this, which I expect to go nowhere,” Mr. Jensen said.
“What are we going to negotiate about?” he asked, asserting that what’s really at play is “an international diplomatic contest and battle for hearts and minds about staying behind Ukraine and not acquiescing to Russian terms.”
“The Russians don’t see negotiations as an end,” he said. “They see them as a tool for advancing their geopolitical interest, and that’s where you have to be very careful.”
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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