Zelensky lands in Davos to present a peace plan that Russia has already rejected
With fighting still raging in Ukraine and the front line having barely moved in more than a year, the country's President Volodymyr Zelensky headed to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday amid a whirlwind of diplomatic discussions about possible peace. talk.
At the forum, a gathering of business and financial elites, Mr. Zelensky is promoting a diplomatic initiative called the Peace Formula, which has won the support of dozens of countries. But Russia is not among those countries, and Moscow has rejected its terms.
Russia has said through informal envoys that President Vladimir V. Putin is now open to talks on a ceasefire. But Ukrainian officials have said they will reject any temporary ceasefire separate from a broader settlement, lest Russia use the pause simply to regroup and attack again.
On Monday, Switzerland agreed to take the Ukrainian plan a step further. Switzerland will host a summit of countries supporting the Peace Formula later this year, the country's President Viola Amherd said after a meeting with Mr Zelensky.
The plan calls for a complete Russian withdrawal from all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea; payment of reparations; and prosecution of war crimes. Analysts and even politicians who support the proposal consider all these demands unattainable given the current balance of power on the battlefield. The proposal also includes intermediate steps such as securing Ukrainian nuclear sites, guaranteeing grain exports and exchanging prisoners of war.
Ukraine is now on the defensive along almost its entire 900-kilometer front line and faces reluctant support from allies in Europe and the United States for continued military and financial assistance. The country is also preparing for an unpopular call up of about half a million additional troops for the army.
Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis has suggested that Russia should be invited to the Peace Formula meeting, even though Moscow was unlikely to accept.
The Ukrainian plan represented only one side of the war, Cassis said at a news conference on Sunday, and Russia's positions should ultimately be heard. It would be an “illusion,” he added, to think that Russia would participate under the conditions Ukraine has set out.
Mr. Zelenskiy said last month that Ukraine would open talks with Russia by conveying, through an intermediary, the settlement proposal after a meeting of leaders who support the plan.
This formulation is a slight revision of his earlier insistence that Ukraine would negotiate only after it had liberated its territory. Russia now occupies about 20 percent of Ukraine.
Mr Zelensky said 83 countries had taken part in a conference of national security advisers in Davos on Sunday to agree on a final draft of the peace proposal. “For us it is very important to show that the whole world is against Russian aggression and that the whole world is for a just peace,” he said.
Ukraine introduced the plan in 2022 and has been trying to build support since then. After the meeting of national security advisers, Ukrainian officials rejected, as they have repeatedly, the possibility of talks leading to a ceasefire that would freeze the current frontline.
Andriy Yermak, Mr. Zelensky's chief of staff, told reporters in Davos on Sunday: “The Ukrainian president and his entire team will never accept and agree to a frozen conflict.”
Mr. Zelensky visited Switzerland a day after his military achieved success in the air war by downing a Russian radar plane and damaging a command and control aircraft.
Ukraine hit both planes as they flew over the Sea of Azov far behind the front line, air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat told Ukrainian news media, suggesting the country had the ability to attack at long ranges. The army did not clarify which weapons it had fired. The Ukrainian claim could not be independently confirmed.
The radar plane, a model known as an A-50, crashed, while the command and control plane, an Il-22, landed at an airport in southern Russia while on fire, Mr. Ihnat said.
Last month, the Ukrainian air force said it had shot down five Russian fighter jets near the front line, also without specifying how it did so. Military analysts suggested that Ukraine had downed the plane with American-supplied Patriot missiles.