On Sunday, a senior official from Ukraine said that discussions held in a city in Saudi Arabia, Jeddah, were "productive" amid efforts for a peaceful settlement over the war with Russia.
However, Moscow said the meeting was a doomed attempt to swing the Global South behind Kyiv. The talks in Jeddah that ended on Sunday included more than 40 countries, such as China, India, the United States, and several European countries, but it did not include Russia.
Ukraine Touts 'Productive' Jeddah Talks
Ukraine and its global allies have called the talks an attempt to secure broad international support for principles that Kyiv wants to be used as the basis for peace. These include withdrawing Russia's troops and returning all Ukrainian territory to its control.
In a statement, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he wants a global summit based on such principles later this year. On the other hand, Saudi Arabia's Media Ministry said that the talks' participants agreed on the importance of continuing consultations to make way for peace between Moscow and Kyiv, as per Reuters.
Additionally, European officials said that the participants of the peace talks wanted to establish working groups responsible for addressing specific problems raised by the conflict.
The situation comes 18 months after Russia started its invasion of Ukraine, and officials worry that any prospect of direct peace talks between the two nations could be unlikely. In a statement, Zelensky's head of staff, Andriy Yermak, said they had productive consultations on key principles.
On the other hand, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as saying that the Jeddah meeting was a "reflection of the West's attempt to continue futile, doomed efforts" to mobilize the Global South in support of Zelensky's agenda.
Russia Criticizes Meeting
The meeting in Jeddah follows similar talks held in Copenhagen earlier in June that were designed to be informal and yielded no official statement. Additionally, Ukraine said that the 10-point peace formula talked about in Saudi Arabia got more support than the discussions in Denmark, according to Arab News.
A senior White House official noted that U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan led Washington's delegation to Jeddah. In a Friday statement, the official Saudi Press Agency said that the meeting underscores the region's willingness to exert its good offices to achieve a solution that would result in permanent peace.
China's special envoy for Eurasian affairs, Li Hui, said that while the Asian nation has many disagreements with other nations, their principles are shared. A source from the EU added that Beijing's officials actively participated in the talks and showed optimism regarding the idea of a third meeting.
China's involvement in peace talks is considered a major development as it had been previously invited to the Copenhagen talks but did not attend. The discussions were meant to find a viable basis for a meeting between heads of state, where officials said they could set a meeting before the end of the year, said The Guardian.
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