This weekend’s Swiss talks on Ukraine, which excluded Russia and weren’t attended by most of the Global South, ended with a largely inoffensive joint communique that can be read here. It just repeated some of the West’s top talking points about this conflict while including a few lines about nuclear safety and humanitarian issues as well. Nevertheless, some of the leading attendees like India still decided not to sign it, which disappointed the organizers.
That country’s delegation leader explained his government’s principled neutrality towards this conflict whereby it’ll always participate in any peace initiative even if it disagrees with the details thereof. It’s also important to mention in this context that the Swiss President said that “different points of view” were expressed during the summit, thus suggesting that India and other Russian partners gently pushed back against Ukraine and the West’s envisaged resolution of this conflict.
Another interesting tidbit to emerge from the summit was the Ukrainian human rights commissioner later revealing that some of the attendees that “traditionally have good relations with Russia” offered to mediate between the two warring parties. Seeing as how India’s relations with Russia are officially considered by both parties to be a special and privileged strategic partnership, it would make perfect sense for its delegation leader to have been one of those who offered their country’s diplomatic services.
These supplementary outcomes contrasted with the expectation of some Russian officials like former President and incumbent Deputy Chair of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, who tweeted late last month that those countries who chose to attend were tacitly siding with Ukraine. Less dramatic statements were also made by other officials, the gist of which were that these talks were a waste of time and could be exploited by the West to ramp up its pressure on Russia.
It’s understandable that Russia was angry that a multilateral event was being held about the Ukrainian Conflict without its participation, but its reaction to this latest one was much harsher than previous such events over the past year such as the Jeddah talks, where Kiev’s ultimatums were front and center. The contrast between these approaches was explained here, which boils down to the changed diplomatic conditions as China and Brazil now seek to jointly lead a fairer and more inclusive peace process.
In order for these incipient efforts to bear the greatest fruit, it was incumbent for the latest Swiss talks to fail, especially through the lack of participation from the Global South. This sets the latest initiative up with more of a chance to succeed since the predictably larger number of participants from the Global South could be presented as signifying more international support for the joint Sino-Brazilian six-point peace consensus. Accordingly, the aforesaid principles could become the basis for a new round of talks.
Circling back to last weekend’s event, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as some in Russia expected, particularly after it became known that India and others declined signing the joint communique while Ukraine revealed that some of them even offered to mediate an end to the conflict. In hindsight, Russia’s hyperbolic rhetoric preceding these talks was arguably misdirected, and it would have been better for those officials such as Medvedev to trust Russia’s partners like India instead of doubting their intentions.
