Page 41 - RusRPTAug24

bne August 2024 Southeast Europe I 41
I believe that over 100 countries have already supported it, which is crucial, because it envisages an immediate ceasefire. Only when a ceasefire has been achieved and when no more people lose their lives the negotiations should begin, but I do not see a chance for this to happen," Vucic said.
The calls come as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban put the cat amongst the pigeons with a series of meetings after Hungary took over the six-month rotating presidency of the EU on July 1, visiting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in Kyiv before travelling on to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow
on July 5. Orban later met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in China and former US President Donald Trump in the US as part of what he dubbed a “peace mission.” During the Nato summit he told delegates that “Ukraine should not join Nato.”
The EU executives were outraged
by what they called Orban’s “fake diplomacy” and have promised to punish Budapest for undermining the unity of the EU’s support for Ukraine.
However, with the military campaign in a stalemate and Western arm supplies unlikely to be increased dramatically
removed their names after coming under pressure from the Kremlin.
Likewise, the Nato summit held in Washington on July 11-13 was equally inconclusive. Nothing was added to Ukraine’s aspiration to join the military alliance other than to say the path to Ukraine’s accession was “irreversible”, but no roadmap or timeline for its joining was given.
Likewise, Zelenskiy's strenuous calls
for permission to use Western-supplied weapons to hit targets deep inside Russia were rebuffed. The main concrete results were the promise of a few more Patriot missile batteries and an extra $40bn of funding for this year by Nato members. Promises of the delivery of badly
needed F-16 were repeated, but again no concrete timeline was given, although the first four F-16s are expected to arrive this summer.
Ukraine will get fewer F-16 fighter jets this summer due to a language barrier between Ukrainian pilots and their foreign instructors as well as complex logistics of delivering spare parts, Bloomberg said citing sources on July 14. Ukraine will eventually be able to field a squadron of between 15 and 24 jets, according to one of the sources, far
Peace brokers
China and Brazil have also called for talks. On May 23, following a meeting between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Brazilian Presidential Special Representative for International Affairs Celso Amorim, the two sides issued a joint statement saying that
the sole way of resolving the conflict
in Ukraine was through a dialogue and negotiations. China and Brazil called for convening an international conference "at an appropriate time" with all parties enjoying equal representation.
The leaders of both Bulgaria and Turkey have also recently offered to mediate talks between Russia and Ukraine.
Bulgaria to advocate for peace talks between Ukraine and Russia at Nato summit and Bulgaria's interim Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev said that Sofia was willing to act as a mediator. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made a similar offer, but so far
the Kremlin has rebuffed the idea of starting talks.
However, Erdogan said that talks on restarting the Black Sea Grain Initiative, that was suspended last year, have resumed, in which Turkey played a key role. There have been no results yet, Erdogan told reporters after the return from the Nato summit.
"We suggest opening the grain corridor again and are now holding talks on
that with Russia and with Ukraine. We have not yet received any results on this issue. My last meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin was dedicated to that. We discussed these issues with President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelenskiy at the Nato summit. We want to work on the grain corridor with the Ukrainian side also. We hope we will start using this corridor again," Erdogan said, cited by the Anadolu agency.
Zelenskiy has called for a second peace summit to which both Russia and China will be invited to be held before the November presidential elections, as it looks increasingly likely that Trump will be re-elected and has threatened to end support for Ukraine.
“With the military campaign in a stalemate and Western arm supplies unlikely to be increased dramatically before next year, a growing number of Ukraine’s supporters are saying the time for talks has come”
before next year, a growing number of Ukraine’s supporters are saying the time for talks has come.
The recent Swiss peace summit held on June 16-17 was deemed a failure after Kyiv was unable to attract a significant number of countries from the Global South to participate and only 78 countries signed the final watered down communiqué, and even then several countries quietly
short of the 120 planes Zelenskiy has been calling for. Another source spoke about 20 F-16s that are supposed to be delivered by the end of this year.
In Kyiv the new delays will appear
as more foot dragging, as the US has reportedly deliberately dragging its heels in training pilots to fly the desperately needed F-16 fighter jets, afraid of escalating tensions with Russia further.
www.bne.eu