Saudi Arabia to Host Ukraine Peace Talks as Part of Western Effort to Woo Global South

Saudi Arabia is set to host peace talks among Western countries, Ukraine and key developing countries, including India and Brazil, early next month, as Europe and Washington intensify efforts to consolidate international support for Ukraine’s peace demands.

According to diplomats involved in the discussion, the meeting would bring senior officials from up to 30 countries to Jeddah on Aug. 5 and 6. It comes amid a growing battle between the Kremlin and Ukraine’s Western backers to win support from major developing countries, many of which have been neutral over the Ukraine war.

Ukraine and Western officials hope the efforts could culminate in a peace summit later this year where global leaders would sign up to shared principles for resolving the war. They hope that those principles could frame future peace talks between Russia and Ukraine to Kyiv’s advantage.

A summit this year, however, wouldn’t include Russia, which has shunned any serious talk of peace and has held on to maximalist demands for any settlement, including annexation of territory its forces don’t currently control.

It comes as the war appears to have reached a stalemate, with neither side able to gain meaningful territory in recent months.

The meeting follows on from a gathering of senior officials in Copenhagen in late June, attended by Brazil, India, Turkey and South Africa. U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan dialed into the meeting. Ukraine and several major European countries also participated.

For the Jeddah meeting, Saudi Arabia and Ukraine have invited 30 countries, including Indonesia, Egypt, Mexico, Chile and Zambia. It isn’t yet clear how many will attend, although the countries who took part in the Copenhagen talks are expected to do so again.

The U.K., South Africa, Poland and the EU are among those who have confirmed attendance.

For now, Sullivan is expected to attend, according to a person familiar with the planning.

The White House declined to comment.

Saudi Arabia is trying to play a larger role in diplomacy on Ukraine, after the White House accused it last year of siding with Russia in keeping oil prices high—thus bolstering Moscow’s finances. It has facilitated the exchange of prisoners of war and hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at an Arab summit in May.

Western diplomats said that Saudi Arabia was picked to host the second round of talks partly in hopes of persuading China, which has maintained close ties to Moscow, to participate.

Riyadh and Beijing maintain close ties. Earlier this year, China helped negotiate a recent thaw between Saudi Arabia and its regional foe, Iran, months after the Saudis hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping at an Arab summit.

Despite claiming to be working on a peace plan for Ukraine, China sat out the Copenhagen meeting. People involved in the talks said Beijing isn’t expected to attend but that it hasn’t ruled it out.

The Saudi meeting comes at a critical moment in the fight between Russia and Ukraine’s Western backers for global support.

The U.S. and Europe have pushed for a global condemnation of Russia’s decision earlier this month to pull out of a United Nations-brokered deal aimed at easing the export of grain from Ukraine, a move that pushed grain prices up for poor countries.

At a meeting this month, top European and Latin American leaders expressed “deep concern on the continuing war against Ukraine.” Last month, the U.S. and India concluded defense deals aimed at weaning New Delhi off arms purchases from Russia.

Meanwhile, Russia President Vladimir Putin hosted African leaders in St. Petersburg this week, during which he pledged to provide free grain supplies for a half-dozen African nations.

European officials had hoped to narrow the differences between Ukraine and the developing countries on how to end the war quickly enough to hold a peace summit by the fall. But that timing appears ambitious.

At the Copenhagen meeting, there was a large gap in views between Ukraine and most of the attending developing countries, according to people involved. Ukrainian officials pushed participants to back Zelensky’s existing 10-point peace plan, which calls for the return of all occupied territory and demands that Russian troops exit Ukraine before peace talks can start.

The developing-country group made it clear they were open to discussing shared principles but wouldn’t sign onto Ukraine’s plan.

While the U.S. and Europe are publicly backing Kyiv’s peace plan, Western officials say it is clear the global talks will only succeed if they are crafted around a set of widely shared international principles, such as the U.N. charter, which stands up for territorial sovereignty and political independence and condemns acts of aggression and the threat and use of force.

A senior European diplomat said Ukraine was still pushing for international backing on issues that developing countries won’t accept—for example, a broadening of sanctions on Moscow.

India, Turkey, Brazil and China have eschewed Western sanctions on Moscow.

Write to Laurence Norman at [email protected] and Stephen Kalin at [email protected]