Why the Ukraine peace summit was a non-starter on ending the war

Representatives from more than 90 countries gathered in Switzerland over the weekend for the Summit on Peace in Ukraine. Amid all the fanfare, the two-day conference on June 15-16 offered no meaningful breakthroughs to end the Russia-Ukraine war, with Moscow not even invited to the summit.

The majority of countries remained critical of Russia, issuing a joint communique endorsing Kiev’s “territorial integrity”.

The Ukraine-Russia war is reaching a sensitive stage. Moscow wants to legitimise its hold over several territories claimed during the war, while Kiev insists on the complete withdrawal of Russian forces to break ground on talks. Ukraine’s future membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is another point of contention: Moscow insists that Ukraine must drop its membership bid to support momentum for a possible truce.

Is it possible to avoid key sticking points and prepare the ground for a difficult compromise?

Russia’s exclusion and NATO

Russia’s involvement in any peace summit is a central consideration for credible negotiations. By ensuring Putin’s absence from the conference, Ukraine’s Western allies weakened their own commitment to “dialogue between all parties” and achieving “comprehensive, just and lasting peace”.

Both Kiev and Moscow have a shared stake in assessing post-war settlement scenarios and managing expectations on possible troop withdrawals from eastern Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Neither Kiev nor Moscow will likely agree to total disengagement from these regions. But their present trust deficit could narrow if their terms and conditions were at least considered at the summit.

That is precisely where the conference fell short. The final declaration did not take into account the post-war settlement or troop withdrawal interests, indicating a lost opportunity to promote substantive deliberations on hot-button issues.

Instead, threat perceptions are set to rise. Cross-border aerial assaults between Russia and Ukraine are picking up, and Washington is keen to develop Ukraine’s armed forces and promote its NATO membership bid. Increased US support for Ukraine’s military complicates prospects of de-escalation, given Putin’s insistence that Ukraine must drop its NATO membership bid for a possible ceasefire.

The summit struggled to put a floor beneath nuclear tensions as well. Russia recently warned of escalating discord after NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said that the alliance could deploy more nuclear weapons and place them on standby. This runs counter to the summit’s final consensus that “any threat or use of nuclear weapons in the context of the ongoing war against Ukraine” was inadmissible.

Global South and geopolitical implications

Growing divisions between the West and the Global South were also on display at the summit. Major non-aligned states such as Saudi Arabia, India, South Africa, Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates refused to put their weight behind the West-backed joint statement, undermining the summit’s credibility and impact on future peace.

On the one hand, Ukraine and the West need China and Saudi Arabia to facilitate a credible peace process that treats Kiev and Moscow’s demands on an equal footing. But Beijing’s absence from the summit and Riyadh’s silence on hosting follow-up talks make a fundamental point certain: the Global South is increasingly disillusioned with the West’s economic and diplomatic isolation of Russia.

Look back to the Western economic sanctions on Moscow. Saudi Arabia strengthened its energy cooperation with Russia and is unwilling to risk diplomatic goodwill by siding with a Ukraine-focused final declaration. Riyadh, like Beijing, also understands that Russian priorities on troop withdrawal, ceasefire, and NATO expansion will inevitably need to be taken into account. All this reinforces the fact that Russia must be engaged from the outset.

On the geopolitical front, expect positions on the Russia-Ukraine war to become more polarised. After all, Ukraine’s Western allies endorsed outcomes that pinned the war's substantial suffering and devastation squarely on Russia, but a growing number of non-aligned states didn’t share that view. Frictions will likely be sustained as the West leverages frozen Russian assets to prolong the war.

The Group of Seven (G7) economies recently announced plans to finance a $50B loan for Ukraine through Russian assets to aid its counter-offensives in the war. That plan also carries the risk of “extremely painful” Russian retaliation. For many non-Western states with robust energy and trade links to Moscow, antagonising Russia is a risky bet.

Western influence

Western influence is another limiting factor for the Ukraine peace summit. Consider China’s decision to shun the gathering altogether. By doing so, Beijing signalled its resistance to a West-backed peace summit that was aimed at endorsing Ukraine’s 10-point peace proposal and featured an outsized emphasis on Kiev’s own territorial integrity.

Beijing, like a few major Global South powers, has a point to prove to the West because its own peace plan released last February called for an end to Western sanctions against Russia and criticised Washington’s global dominance. Only last week,

China’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations Geng Shuang said: “China calls on the parties to the conflict to demonstrate political will, come together, and start peace talks as soon as possible to achieve a ceasefire and halt military actions.”

Beijing’s support for direct Ukraine-Russia peace talks is an indirect rebuke of the summit and reinforces the broader view that Moscow must be the centre of credible peace talks.

Thus understood, the Ukraine peace summit revealed deep splits between the Global South and the West, hampering consensus on ending the war.

It is one thing to express Western solidarity with Ukraine and quite another to bring two warring parties closer to peace.