By Galina Korol and AFP | 2024-05-27

KYIV -- A global summit to discuss peace in Ukraine could put pressure on Russia, which launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Bürgenstock, Switzerland, is set to host the Global Peace Summit on June 15-16. The event's organizers, Ukraine and Switzerland, have invited more than 160 countries across the globe.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Charles Michel, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are among the leaders who have said yes so far, RTS reported.

In an interview with AFP published May 17, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy pointed to three issues around which consensus could be found in Switzerland.

The first, he said, was that free navigation in the Black Sea could strengthen global food security by allowing Ukrainian grain exports.

Second, he hoped for an agreement on a call to halt strikes on energy infrastructure.

Third, he advocated for the return to Ukraine of thousands of children deported to Russia, a crime for which the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Putin.

"If we come out of the summit with these three steps with the majority of countries agreeing... it means that Russia will not block them further," he told AFP.

Ukraine is willing to engage in dialogue with any state that supports its territorial integrity, he said.

China's attendance

Arguably, the most suspense hangs over whether China will send a delegation to the summit, analysts told Kontur.

Russia, with its relatively tiny and backward economy, has become dependent on China to prop it up after Europe drastically reduced purchases of Russian oil and gas.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's first foreign trip after his inauguration in May was to China.

"China's position influences many other countries that depend on China politically or for trade," said diplomat Alexander Khara, a foreign policy and security analyst at the Center for Defense Strategies in Kyiv.

In addition, China is pushing the angle that "you can't hold any summits without inviting Russia," Khara told Kontur.

Russia is seizing on this claim, promoting these assertions through its propagandists.

Even though "Russia opposes this summit and is now doing everything it can to make sure that as few countries as possible attend it, China has its own game," Volodymyr Fesenko, a Ukrainian political analyst and director of the Penta Center for Political Studies, told Kontur.

For this reason, China might attend the summit regardless of what Russia wants, Fesenko said. However, it is unclear how and by whom China would be represented at the event.

"China wants to portray itself as a serious geopolitical player," Pawel Usow, a political analyst and director of the Warsaw-based Center for Political Analysis and Prognosis, told Kontur. "Just as the Soviet Union once represented the anti-Western socialist-communist bloc ... China has now taken on that role."

If China goes, "that will be yet another humiliation for Putin that demonstrates that Russia is a pariah and on the periphery," he added.

Escalation of war

The Global Peace Summit is a major diplomatic event for Ukraine as well as other countries, said Khara.

"Essentially, the summit needs to give an impetus to the parties that to this point either haven't made up their mind or shown that they've made up their mind to do something," he said.

The war is a "global problem, a food problem and a problem touching many other economically related issues," he said.

But for its part, Russia is sending a signal to the summit attendees with its recent escalation of the war and offensive in Kharkiv province.

"The Russians' goal is essentially to use the escalation of the war to compel others to accept their reasoning at peace talks. They want to force us and the international community, our partners, to come to the negotiating table on their terms," Fesenko said.

And these terms are at odds with Ukraine's position, observers say.

"At a minimum, the plan [from Russia] is the recognition that all the territory occupied by the Russians belongs to Russia, and that the Russian troops will stay there," said Usow.

So as of now, holding talks with Russia is out of the question.

"When the Kremlin understands that it won't be able to win this war, then talks can start," said Fesenko.

However, on many issues, "Ukraine and Russia hold diametrically opposed and often incompatible positions," he said.

Moreover, no one harbors any illusions that the Global Peace Summit will lead Russia to back down and pull out of Ukraine.

"The main goal of the global summit is to make sure that during future peace talks not only Ukraine's position but also the position of a portion of the international community is represented. Then Russia one way or another will be forced to contend with that," he said.