Zelenskiy wants his peace proposal for Russia ready by the end of this year

By the end of 2024, Volodymyr Zelenskiy wants the Ukrainian proposal to end the war to be ready to be presented to the Russian government. On June 16, during the Swiss peace summit, the Ukrainian president declared that the next and final summit with his allies should be held in “months, not years.”

At this second meeting, a document is to emerge. Third countries – on behalf of Ukraine – will then present it to President Vladimir Putin to begin negotiations. On June 25, Andriy Yermak, Zelenskiy’s right-hand man, confirmed to Time The magazine estimates that the aim is to organize a conference in Saudi Arabia before the end of the year. This meeting will determine the final proposal.

On June 21, Igor Zhovkva, a member of Yermak’s team, told the Interfax news agency that there were three reasons for hurrying up: the first is that Ukraine “wants peace as soon as possible.” The second is that the ongoing multinational work to clarify each of the 10 points of Zelenskiy’s proposal is moving forward rapidly, according to this representative of the Ukrainian presidency. And the third reason is connected with the US presidential elections in November. As Zhovkva acknowledged, everyone is waiting for a possible victory of the Republican candidate – former President Donald Trump – who is openly opposed to continuing economic and military aid to Ukraine. Yermak added that the war in Gaza has further complicated the global geopolitical situation.

The Trump Factor

Trump has a plan on the table to end the war. This is what the candidate’s two advisors who developed it, Keith Kellog and Fred Fleitz, told Reuters on Tuesday June 25. This document states that Ukraine must be required to open a dialogue with Russia if it wants to continue receiving American weapons. And Moscow – according to the plan – will be asked to agree to negotiate with kyiv because, otherwise, the White House will increase its military support for Ukraine.

According to Zelensky’s advisor Mijailo Podoliak, the plan proposed by Trump’s team is “strange” because it legitimizes the violation of international law. He also does not envisage Russia paying compensation for the destruction caused.

On June 16, Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis said that it would be most practical for the second summit to take place before the US presidential elections. But not everyone agrees. On June 24, Mijaílo Gonchar, one of Ukraine’s main defense policy advisors and president of the Strategy XXI Center for Global Studies, assured EL PAÍS that the ideal month to present the peace proposal was December: “Before November, in the middle of the American election, this could look like a pressure operation on Joe Biden. In December, the elections will be over… (we) will know who the new president will be, who has not yet taken office. » Gonchar, who participated in the negotiations in Switzerland, emphasizes that the main pressure to start negotiations as soon as possible comes from European powers.

The ten points of Zelenskiy’s “peace formula” are the basis of the summit held in Switzerland. 89 countries ultimately signed the joint declaration that supported Zelenskiy’s proposal. However, there was intense debate in Ukraine over whether the summit was truly positive. Media opposed to the president have criticized the lack of significant support from countries in the South, including India, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Saudi Arabia and, most importantly, China, which is the main diplomatic support from Russia.

Trading directly and through third parties

The structure of Zelensky’s peace formula assumes that 10 governments will develop the content of the 10 points, so as to get as many states as possible supporting it. It remains unclear how the final document will be presented to Russia, but on June 21, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in state media that the model to follow would be similar to the one that succeeded in launching the Black Sea Grain Initiative in 2022, which enabled the export of Ukrainian wheat via Black Sea ports. Russia broke the agreement a year later, but Kuleba stressed that this was the way forward: “The participation of the Russian Federation in the second peace summit is possible according to the format of the grain initiative of the black Sea. We had a very successful experience in negotiations on the grain initiative. Then Ukraine negotiated with Turkey and the UN, then Turkey and the UN negotiated with Russia. The agreement resembled a document signed between Turkey, the UN and Ukraine, as well as between Turkey, the UN and Russia.”

Yermak — who is the most influential politician in Ukraine, along with Zelenskiy — assured Time magazine that the final scenario must involve Ukrainian and Russian officials sitting at the same table to seal the deal.

The Kremlin considers the Ukrainian peace formula unacceptable. The Russian government has no intention of returning even a single square foot of the territories occupied since 2014. Nor does the Zelensky administration plan to give up a single shred of Ukrainian sovereignty, not even in the Crimean Peninsula, illegally annexed in 2014 (which Russia considers an inalienable part of its national identity). Last week, a meeting of the Crimea Platform – a diplomatic summit founded by Zelensky in 2021 – was held in Kiev, “precisely at a time when, in the negotiations with Russia, Crimea was nowhere to be found,” Maria Tomak, head of the Crimea Platform, explained in a conversation with EL PAÍS. “The Platform was created precisely to make it clear that Crimea will not be a bargaining chip.”

A report released last spring by Crimean Platform defense experts says the liberation of the peninsula is essential to the outcome of the war and even to Russia’s future: “Crimea was used by Russia as a springboard for its offensive and currently Crimea is used as a base for occupation… it remains the center of gravity of the war and its liberation will block Russia’s war efforts and could trigger the collapse of the regime Vladimir Poutine. »

From kyiv, Refat Chubarov, chairman of the Crimean Tatar People’s Council, assures that military experts are convinced that it is possible to isolate Russian troops in Crimea and block the logistical supplies of the invader in southern Ukraine. A diplomatic representative of an EU country bordering the Black Sea, who requested anonymity, explained to EL PAÍS that one of the priorities of his presence at the conferences organized by the Crimean Platform was to gather information on the real possibility of expelling the invader from the peninsula. The Ukrainian authorities, for their part, are trying to convince NATO that Russia’s withdrawal from the Crimean peninsula will bring stability to the entire Black Sea.

Independent voices in Ukraine are beginning to question the realism of some of these proposals. On June 22, Anatoli Amelin, founder of the Ukrainian Institute of the Future, published a short essay in the Italian magazine The Espresso, in which he concludes that the best option for all parties involved in the war is to freeze the conflict. He argued that this meant securing Ukraine’s access to the Sea of Azov and tripling the country’s military potential. Amelin estimates that the end of hostilities on the front could come by fall 2024 or spring 2025, depending on the outcome of the US presidential elections. He also wrote that Zelensky’s peace proposal was unlikely to succeed because it represented a defeat for Russia.

At the beginning of June, Mikola Bielieskov, researcher at the National Institute for Strategic Studies, an organization dependent on the Ukrainian president’s office, summarized to EL PAÍS that Washington does not want the war to worsen global instability. “The United States is following the old doctrine that Russia cannot win this war… but it cannot lose it either. »

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