On 15 and 16 June, Switzerland will host the Ukraine peace summit. It will build on four rounds of discussions in recent months and be structured around the Ukrainian peace formula for a just and lasting end to the war. Ukraine is under pressure to deliver an impressive roster of guests, but President Joe Biden has already announced he will be represented by Kamala Harris, his vice-president. Other powerful countries will not be represented at all; China is among them. Saudi Arabia and Brazil may also be absent, though many things could still change before the motorcades start to arrive at the Bürgenstock Resort near Lucerne.
I met with the Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba in Kyiv on 5 June. For a year now, military developments on the front line have evolved slowly and few in the capital spend the same amount of time feverishly monitoring news from the battlefield as they used to, even if worries about loved ones serving in the armed forces are still high. Diplomacy, however, is going through an intense phase. There is the peace conference, through which Ukraine hopes to prevent others from shaping the path to peace negotiations in its name. Simultaneously, discussions with Ukraine’s Western partners have reached a delicate moment. Kuleba admitted that much in our interview, pointing out that certain issues now threaten to make a number of Western partners unhappy. That is simply the dynamic of a war, which keeps expanding, raising the stakes for every side.
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