German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has dismissed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s peace proposals for Ukraine as “not serious.” The G7 leaders did not discuss the proposals because everyone knew they were not meant to be taken seriously, Scholz said shortly before leaving for Switzerland. Scholz said Putin’s proposals to abandon four provinces Russia claims, stop fighting, and drop its ambition of NATO membership were aimed only at distracting from the peace conference in Switzerland.
Around 90 countries and organizations have committed to the two-day gathering at the Buergenstock, a mountaintop resort in central Switzerland. However, the summit has had to contend with an alternative plan floated by China. U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, Britain, Canada, and Japan are among those due to attend. India, Turkey, and Hungary, which maintain friendly relations with Russia, are also expected to join.
Russia, which sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February 2022, has described the idea of a summit without it as “futile.” Supporters of Ukraine are marking the Swiss talks with a series of events in the nearby city of Lucerne to draw attention to the war’s humanitarian costs, with a demonstration planned to call for the return of prisoners and children taken to Russia.
European officials privately concede that without support from Moscow’s main allies, the summit’s impact will be limited. Swiss officials hosting the conference say more than 50 heads of state and government, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will join the gathering at the Bürgenstock resort overlooking Lake Lucerne. Some 100 delegations, including European bodies and the United Nations, will be on hand.
China, which backs Russia, is joining scores of countries that are sitting out the conference, many of whom have more pressing issues than the conflict in Europe. Beijing says any peace process needs to have the participation of both Russia and Ukraine and has floated its ideas for peace.
Zelenskyy recently led a diplomatic push to draw in participants. Russian troops now control nearly a quarter of Ukrainian land in the east and south, having made some territorial gains in recent months. Against the backdrop of battlefield developments and diplomatic strategizing, summit organizers have presented three agenda items: nuclear safety, humanitarian assistance and exchange of prisoners of war, and global food security.
However, this agenda falls short of the proposals and hopes laid out by Zelenskyy in a 10-point peace formula in late 2022. Putin’s government wants any peace deal to be built around a draft agreement negotiated in the war’s early phases that included provisions for Ukraine’s neutral status and limits on its armed forces while delaying talks about Russia-occupied areas.
With much of the world’s focus recently on other international events, Ukraine’s backers want to return attention to Russia’s breach of international law and the need to restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity. The International Crisis Group, an advisory firm that works to end conflict, wrote this week that “absent a major surprise,” the event is “unlikely to deliver much of consequence.”
Nonetheless, the Swiss summit is a chance for Ukraine and its allies to underline what the U.N. General Assembly recognized in 2022 and repeated in its February 2023 resolution on a just peace in Ukraine: Russia’s aggression is a blatant violation of international law.
