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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, announced last week that officials from several Western and major developing countries would convene in the Saudi Arabian city of Jeddah this weekend to discuss Kyiv's peace plan to end the war in his country.
Among those who have been invited are representatives of 30 countries, include US and European ministers and diplomats along with their counterparts from Brazil, China, India and South Africa. Notably, Russia will not attend the talks, and the Kremlin said Monday that it needed to learn more about the purpose of the meeting and what will be discussed. Speaking on the subject on a call with reporters, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, “Any attempt to promote a peaceful settlement deserves a positive evaluation.”
But he quickly reasserted that Moscow did not currently see grounds for Ukraine peace talks. "The Kyiv regime does not want and cannot want peace, as long as it is used exclusively as a tool in the war of the collective West with Russia," he said.
The talks, coming three months after Saudi Arabia hosted Zelenskyy at the Arab League summit, are a chance for Riyadh to demonstrate its mediator role not just on regonal issues but on the global stage. The basis for the talks are Zelenskyy's 10-point peace plan granting the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, security guarantees for Ukraine, the withdrawal of all Russian troops, the release of all prisoners, and accountability for those responsible for the invasion.
Jonathan Panikoff, director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Program, told Al-Monitor that the Saudis see an opportunity to reinforce the mediator status. “Closer to home it is almost certainly not lost on Riyadh that Jeddah is the preferred locale and not Abu Dhabi or Doha — which has sought to position itself as a regional and global mediator and whose PM was just in Ukraine last week,” he said.
Middle Eastern powers are increasingly helping to mediate recent agreements between the two warring neighbors. For example, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan were responsible for brokering a swap of nearly 300 prisoners of war between Ukraine and Russia in late September.
Gerald Feierstein, a former US ambassador to Yemen and director of the Arabian Peninsula Affairs Program at the Middle East Institute, said that the talks take Western pressure off Riyadh over its close ties to Moscow, including Saudi measures that are perceived as helping Russia to absorb the economic impact of the sanctions stemming from its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Chances of a breakthrough
Experts believe the chances of a significant breakthrough this weekend in diplomatic efforts to end the Ukraine war are slim, despite the convergence of pro-Kyiv countries like the United Kingdom and United States and many that have claimed to be neutral, such as India and South Africa.
“But this is neither the first of these conferences and it’s unlikely to be a last. Success doesn’t have to equate to a complete breakthrough,” Panikoff said.
Senior officials from Ukraine, G7 countries, the European Union, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, India and Turkey met on June 24 for peace talks in the Danish capital.
“If Riyadh is able to get more participants engaging with Ukraine than in Copenhagen, especially those countries that have been unaligned when it comes to the conflict, it may not be a huge win, but the Saudis should view it as a step in the right direction,” Panikoff said. “If Riyadh is able to get a senior official from China to participate, that would be a rather big victory.”
He added that talks being held in Jeddah would be more likely to draw in Chinese participation than the obvious locale choices of Europe or the United States.
China has been increasing its diplomatic clout in recent months, brokering a detente between Iran and Saudi Arabia, two longtime regional foes. Beijing, a close ally of Moscow, has also offered a peace plan to end the Ukraine war. It has had a mixed reception as it makes no mention of Crimea, the eastern territory of Ukraine that Russia annexed in 2014. Among Zelenskyy's peace conditions is the return of Crimea to Ukraine.
Sanam Vakil, director of Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa program, told Al-Monitor, “While the talks will not yield any positive outcome, Saudi is using its seemingly non-aligned posture to test the waters on peace prospects and showcase its ability to bring many key middle powers to the table.”
BRICS ambitions
Panikoff said that Ukraine will use the opportunity to rally more support for the war, both diplomatic and military, especially with countries it views as having been neutral.
“Russia is unlikely to be unhappy about the conference but barring significant new commitments to Ukraine from countries previously providing minor support or that were unaligned, is unlikely to take significant actions targeted at participating countries, or Saudi Arabia, aside from public and private messaging,” Panikoff said.
Feierstein said that the talks position Saudi Arabia to be “a leader” among major states that have had a publicly neutral stance to the war, including Brazil, India and China.
“It might also advance Saudi interest to be invited to join the BRICS bloc of states,” he added. The kingdom stated its intention to join the influential group of five nations, which is often seen as an alternative to Western hegemony. The Financial Times reported at the end of May that Saudi Arabia was in talks to join the China-based BRICS bank, which will give the kingdom more financial muscle.
It is not clear that Saudi Arabia sees itself as a peace broker vis-à-vis Ukraine, Feierstein said. “Instead, this is most likely a chance to balance [Riyadh’s] interests and reduce US and Western pressure regarding their relations with Russia, which remain positive primarily because of coordination in OPEC+,” he told Al-Monitor, referring to the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and others.
