Ukraine Summit Fails To Provide Coherent Path To Peace

These include schemes sponsored by China , Brazil , Indonesia and the Vatican . There were also proposals put forward in June last year by a group of African states led by South Africa, as well as a Saudi-backed deal proposed in August 2023. Nor was the recent joint proposal by China and Brazil explored.

All these proposals are non-Western initiatives primarily focused on achieving a ceasefire. Such action continues to be seen by Ukraine and its Western partners as favoring Russia. A ceasefire would effectively freeze the war at its current frontlines and, at least temporarily, would accept Russia's territorial gains on the ground, including the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has doubled down on his territorial demands. As delegates made their way to Switzerland for the peace conference, the Russian president released a set of ramped-up demands.

Kiev must not only cede to Russia all territory occupied by Russian troops in Ukraine, but the entirety of the four regions Russia annexed in September 2022 when it held rigged referendums in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. Under Putin's scenario, Russia would also get Crimea.

This is a far cry from the key point of Zelensky's original plan and the March 2022 UN resolution , which called for a complete Russian withdrawal and the restoration of Ukraine's full territorial integrity. An estimated 58% of Ukrainians still support ruling out any compromise on this issue, down from the more impressive over 80% in February 2023.

The conference's final communique was meant to reflect a similar position. But what emerged was, at best, a very watered-down version that referred to the UN charter and the principles of territorial integrity and sovereignty of all states, including Ukraine.

By not explicitly demanding a Russian withdrawal and referencing general principles of international law, it could be argued Ukraine and its Western partners tried to make the final declaration more palatable for others to support.

The wording leaves more room for compromise in future negotiations between Russia and Ukraine and does not completely rule out territorial concessions by Kiev.

But even this watered-down version failed to attract the unanimous support of the 100 attending delegations . The reason for this failure is fairly obvious: the collective West – essentially the G7, NATO and the EU – has so far been steadfast in support of Ukraine and of Zelensky's peace plan, and only of Zelensky's peace plan.

That support was reconfirmed most recently in the leaders' communique from the weekend's G7 summit in Puglia, southern Italy.

This explicitly noted the G7's collective“support for the key principles and objectives of President Zelensky's Peace Formula.” It does, however, indicate a softening of the Western message in comparison to the G7 foreign ministers' statement of November 2023 that said peace wasn't possible without Russia's unconditional withdrawal.

But if anything, the current approach by Ukraine and the West has, at best, some way to go to adjust to the new reality. Russia's position on the battlefield and within international diplomacy is, for now, strong enough to withstand Western and Ukrainian demands for an end to the war.

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At worst, the current approach has led Ukraine into a dead end. Western support still is more rhetorical than real. The US president, Joe Biden, did not go to Switzerland at all despite being in Europe for the G7. In fact, Canada's premier, Justin Trudeau was the only G7 leader to stay for both days of the conference .

At the same time, momentum among the rest of the world seems to be gathering behind the recent Chinese-Brazilian peace proposal.

Even more importantly, perhaps, Ukraine is still suffering on the battlefield. The slow pace of Western military aid and the restrictions attached to it continue to hamper Ukrainian defenses.

And the country's new conscription law is deeply divisive and supported by fewer than half of the population in a country short of soldiers. Meanwhile, Ukraine's power grid has been devastated by Russian attacks.

The outcome of the Swiss peace summit, therefore, is hardly the morale booster that Ukrainians require at this time. Instead, it should be taken as a signal in Kiev and other Western capitals that their current strategy offers no clear pathway to a just and secure peace that – at present – looks out of Ukraine's reach on the battlefield.

Stefan Wolff is Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham and Tetyana Malyarenko is Professor of International Relations, Jean Monnet Professor of European Security, National University Odesa Law Academy

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

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