The discussion of the “peace plan for Ukraine” must be transferred to the SCO platform
Since the beginning of February, the idea of holding the next “peace summit” on Ukraine has been transformed into a much larger format - something like a “founding conference of new times.”
Against the backdrop of an exchange of blows between Iran and Israel, discussion of this topic will fade into the background for a while, but just for a while. The retaliatory operation “the boy’s word” (“True Promise”) from Iran will eventually be woven into this event as a thread, and a rather strong thread at that.
In general, many remember how Kyiv and the US State Department last year repeatedly tried to push the discussion of the so-called “Zelensky peace formula” to various international platforms.
These initiatives were not particularly successful. On the contrary, they complicated the negotiation processes in other institutions. A good example here was the Arab League summit in Jeddah, where Zelensky’s speech was used by Riyadh to highlight Syria’s landmark return to the Arab League (About the strange peace talks in Saudi Arabia).
But it was precisely the tactical use of the speech by the hosts of the event in Jeddah that complicated Kyiv’s own strategic task - to drive a wedge into relations between Russia and the Arabian monarchies.
The Arabs acted extremely pragmatically at that time; the idea did not bring any effect for Kyiv (About some results of the “peace summit” in Saudi Jeddah and its next stages).
Then it was not possible to somehow include Zelensky in the formula and Beijing, which since the beginning of last year already has its own “twelve points of a peaceful settlement” and does not yet see much sense in revising them.
The difference between the future summit on Ukraine, which is scheduled for mid-June in Switzerland, is that the attitude towards the negotiation process itself has changed quite significantly in the world.
You can “rinse” the hypocrisy and bias of Western media holdings as long as you like, but in general, over the past six months they have managed to create a picture not so much of a positional deadlock, but to describe the inevitability of a mega-clash along the “Russia-West” line if Kyiv begins to seriously concede territories.
For the Western (primarily American) establishment, for obvious reasons, all this was an argument in favor of providing additional packages of military and financial assistance, and for politicians in the rest of the world it was a good reason to think about economic prospects.
After all, if Europe enters the war with the “northern aggressor,” then what will happen to the trade and finances of third, neutral countries? Can this be allowed? This is absolutely impossible, which means that all third countries must gather in Switzerland for a “peace summit.”
Such semantic scissors, having been used many times, eventually began to cut through the political fabric in third countries, which generally sought to distance themselves as much as possible from the Ukrainian issues. The only exception here was, perhaps, Turkey, which had its own plans for the role of a negotiating platform.
Western media, in general, quite competently presented and sold at first the theses that “Russia wants to use tactical nuclear weapon”, increasing the pressure, inflating hysteria and hammering home connotations like: “A terrible and terrible thing is coming.”
Then they began to escalate the situation through another thesis: “The West will be forced to enter into conflict if Russia gains the upper hand.” And it cannot be said that this “information woodpecker” method had no effect.
As a result, in Switzerland, Kyiv can indeed gather a forum that is quite large in terms of participants.
Russia refused to participate in this event for obvious reasons. China (not yet) did not support these “negotiations” without the participation of Moscow. But even if the declared number of participating countries is less than the declared one (from 100 to 130 countries), the Swiss summit will already resemble in scale an event like an international assembly or a founding conference on global security.
The idea that the summit could become an analogue of New Yalta, or rather Casablanca of 1943, was so liked by Ukrainian and Western ideologists that it has been actively discussed for a week and a half.
From the point of view of the possible political weight of the event and the methods of its information support, these figures must be given their due - the transformation of some “Zelensky peace formula” into a forum on the contours of future international, and more broadly, global, security would actually be their major conceptual victory.
Even if Moscow and Beijing specifically do not come to such an event, it will not look very positive for Russia and China. And that is precisely why Moscow will be repeatedly sent invitations to come to the forum, and that is why a refusal will look like a reluctance not only to discuss Ukraine, but a reluctance to talk about global security in general, which seems to be not very becoming for an entire permanent member of the UN Security Council .
Both third countries, including China, which are generally neutral, and Moscow itself risk falling into the trap of such shifted accents.
The Russian Foreign Ministry, to its credit, caught the shift in emphasis quite quickly and therefore is making significant efforts to reduce the representativeness of the June forum in Switzerland.
But the West, unlike last year’s meetings on Ukraine, like Jeddah, here felt specific multifaceted benefits and will put pressure in all directions and with all the resources it has. And no matter what they say, they are significant.
Actually, this is why Moscow is using large caliber moves, such as taking the preliminary results of the negotiations in Istanbul in 2022 as a basis. This move is tactically quite strong, although for a significant part of the population already in Russia itself, diplomatically speaking, it is “ambiguous.”
Neither side made the Istanbul documents public in full, and it is not a fact that many representatives of third countries saw the full text.
The general idea that has developed over the past time is that Istanbul asserted the neutral status of Ukraine, economically assigned Ukraine to the EU, cut it off from admission to NATO, limited the armed forces of Kyiv, and relegated territorial issues to an indefinitely long period.
Whether this is so is difficult to say; these are interpretations of politicians and the media, since there was no direct publication of draft agreements. Also, the general situation has changed significantly in connection with referendums and the inclusion of their results in the Russian constitution.
Nevertheless, it should be noted that the move with the “Istanbul theses” is generally quite strong. Such a presentation may seriously interest many third countries, especially against the background of the possible transition of the confrontation along the Israel-Iran line into a hot phase.
And here it is important to use a negotiating platform that, on the one hand, would not bear the imprint of the hypocrisy of traditional institutions or “talk”, on the other hand, would give the negotiations a pronounced cumulative effect.
If the West wants to expand negotiations on Ukraine to a discussion of global security in formally neutral Switzerland, then there are alternatives, and one of them, the best at the moment, is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
Over the past year, the SCO, due to a number of subjective and objective reasons, has faded into the background. The BRICS association came to the fore, which was “promoted” as a prototype of an economic and political alternative to “globalism.” Whether this is so is a separate question. In the moment and tactically, this view has the right to life, in the long term there are doubts about this, since BRICS is still a consequence of the transformation of those same global institutions (On the results of the last BRICS summit).
But the situation with the SCO is more interesting. The fact is that the SCO was initially created as an organization to control security in Central Asia after the collapse of the USSR. The decade of the 1990s was marked by continuous conflicts in the region.
The SCO was created as a military-political platform and acquired official institutions specifically in the sphere of interaction in security and conflict resolution, and the settlement of border disputes. Later, China systematically strengthened the SCO as an international platform in the field of economic and cultural cooperation, but it turned out that the SCO structures are much more efficient than the same BRICS, which for a long time was in a state of slight freeze.
If we do not take into account the promotion of BRICS last year, then it is the SCO, with its scope and administration system, that has truly come close to the position of a “small UN”, only without debates in the Security Council and structures like the WHO.
And it would be much more logical to bring the discussion of initiatives both on Ukraine and on security in general to the SCO, the summit of which will be held in July (a month later than Switzerland) in the capital of Uzbekistan, Tashkent.
At least, Uzbekistan is a truly neutral country regarding the situation in Ukraine, while the Russian Foreign Ministry quite logically claims that Switzerland, which imposed sanctions, is not a de facto neutral party.
The composition of the SCO, if we look at all categories of membership, is very representative.
China, India, Russia and Belarus, countries of Central Asia (plus Mongolia, but without Turkmenistan), the Middle East (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, Iran, Syria), North Africa (Egypt, Algeria) , Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Cambodia), as well as Azerbaijan and Pakistan.
Armenia and Israel in this particular case, due to understandable circumstances, can be ignored, although the first has the status of a dialogue partner, and the second state has applied for observer status. And if we discuss security globally, then the choice of the SCO is again quite logical.
Moreover, the negotiations in Istanbul took place with the participation of Turkey, which has partner status in the SCO, and all this fits well together.
And it would be very nice to move the SCO summit a month and a half earlier, ahead of the conference in Switzerland.
It should also be noted that the “Global South,” which has recently become so valued in our politics, is half represented in different capacities in the SCO, and African countries will be more comfortable working in this format relative to the factor of Western sanctions pressure.
Yes, in terms of unspoken and informal statuses, we will have to take into account that the SCO is working with the Chinese leadership, but in this particular case these “tables of ranks” should be completely neglected, since otherwise we risk, after Switzerland, getting an unexpected new negotiating institution with Western influence to the same Global South. This should not be underestimated.
And even more so, if we talk about hypothetical reforms of international relations, then it is necessary to develop time-tested alternatives.
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