By Emma Farge
GENEVA (Reuters) – Switzerland’s foreign affairs ministry on Saturday voiced support for a Chinese-led peace plan to end the Ukraine war, saying its view on such efforts had significantly changed.
With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in its third year, the two sides to the conflict remain far apart on any future path to peace. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy is pursuing a “victory plan” while Russia’s President Vladimir Putin says any negotiations can only begin if Kyiv abandons vast swathes of territory and drops it NATO bid.
Conflict mediator Switzerland, which hosted a Ukraine peace summit in June, attended a 17-nation meeting on Friday on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly chaired by China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, and Brazilian foreign policy adviser Celso Amorim.
“We took part in this meeting as an observer and we support this dynamic,” Nicolas Bideau, chief spokesperson for the Foreign Affairs Ministry told Reuters.
Bideau said Switzerland’s view of the plan first issued in May has shifted since a reference was added to the U.N. Charter – the founding treaty of the global body which commits nation to upholding peace.
“For us, this translates into a significant change in our view of these initiatives,” Bideau said. “…A concrete diplomatic effort organised by the Sino-Brazilian group could be of interest to us.”
Switzerland’s peace summit in Buergenstock, to which Russia was not invited, was seen by some foreign policy experts as a Western-led effort to isolate Moscow and drew allegations that it was straying from its centuries’ old tradition of neutrality.
Since then, diplomats say Bern has been pursuing talks to find a host for a sequel summit, with “global South” countries seen as the main candidates.
(Reporting by Emma Farge; additional reporting by Simon Lewis in New York; editing by Jason Neely)
