As the armies of Ukraine and Russia clash sharply along a 2,000-kilometre front, initiatives for a diplomatic solution are multiplying. Also the battle for the story, so far lost by Europe and the United States beyond their traditional allies. Adding allies to the Western vision of the conflict, a war of aggression launched by Russia is justification against Ukraine, and support for the Kyiv peace plan is the objective of the international meeting of national security officials that is taking place today and tomorrow in Copenhagen organized by the United States and Denmark.
The White House, which will send its National Security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and the Undersecretary of State, Victoria Nuland, has invited the representatives of India, Brazil and South Africa, China and Turkey, countries that maintain good relations with Moscow, who have not joined in on Western economic sanctions and whose persistent relativistic view of the invasion deeply irritates Europe. The appointment replaces, for the moment, the “global summit” for peace in Ukraine announced by President Volodimir Zelensky before launching his expected military counteroffensive.
Although it is early to anticipate what the outcome of this operation will be, neither its even limited territorial advances nor the attitude of the Kremlin, with Vladimir Putin determined to resist until the West tires of supporting Kyiv, invite us to think that the end of the war be close. This scenario, worrying for the victims of the invasion, the Western allies of Ukraine and the countries of the so-called Global South, hit by the effects of the conflict on energy and food prices, is leading the Western bloc and other countries to launch a sort of multi-party diplomatic counter-offensive while the fighting continues.
Added to the recent mission of African leaders to Kyiv and Moscow is the willingness of Brazil and the Brics bloc, and even of several Arab countries, to position themselves in the conflict by proposing possible avenues through which to explore the long-awaited peace. This “proliferation of diplomatic initiatives,” says Josep Borrell, Vice President of the European Commission and High Representative for Foreign Policy of the EU, denote not only a genuine desire to silence the arms, but the will of the former non-aligned countries, or the so-called Global South, to position itself in the new world order that is configured from February 24, 2022.
“The war has been an accelerator of events (…), we are seeing the birth of a new distribution of cards and geopolitical concepts,” says Borrell. “The war continues and there are no signs that it is going to stop, that is the impression that those who have recently gone to Moscow have gotten and that proliferation of proposals,” he commented yesterday in a meeting with correspondents in reference to the demonstrations by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and other South American leaders, the African Union and Arab countries considering making proposals, after Zelenski met with Arab League leaders.
The diplomatic positions that have been seen in recent weeks, says Borrell, “respond more to a desire to position oneself geopolitically, to exist on the world game board, than to a real or coherent effort to find a solution. I’m not saying they don’t look for it, but it does respond more to a desire to exist geopolitically”. Europe, he affirms, must be attentive to these movements, as well as to the expansion plans of the Brics bloc, which “will mark future geopolitics.”
The most immediate challenge is to counter the current of opinion in these countries that accuses Europe of having concentrated all its efforts on Ukraine and neglected the rest of the world, a complaint that according to the EU is not supported by the figures (“it has not been removed nothing to anyone to give it to Ukraine”), but which persists and which the Kremlin conscientiously feeds. The challenge of the next EU summit with Latin America and the Caribbean is to convince their leaders that “our interest is not circumstantial”, derived from the war or the need to access critical raw materials to carry out the energy transition, Borrell alert. “The world pivots towards the Pacific and, there, the south becomes central.”
Brussels is not clear to what extent the stalemate on the front lines in Ukraine brings closer or further away the chances of a peace table. According to information gathered through international delegations that have recently visited Moscow, Putin persists in his calculation that in 2024, with the American elections in sight, support for Ukraine will falter.
The EU refutes this reading, recalling the unity that has allowed them to approve eleven rounds of sanctions. The latest, formalized yesterday, narrows the siege against accomplices in evading economic measures against Moscow and provides for the first time the possibility of applying export restrictions to third countries that are considered to be helping to evade punishment. In recent months, the EU has detected an unusual increase in exports of products that are prohibited from being sold to this country, such as machinery parts, chips, chemical products, valves, cranes or even household appliances, to countries bordering Russia or allies of the Kremlin. This round of sanctions is, in a way, the recognition that the measures are not having the expected effect. Europe persists in its triple strategy of stifling the Russian economy, supporting Ukraine and isolating Russia. The question is whether the war will be decided on the battlefield or the negotiating table.
