Zelenskyy in his address declared the summit held in Switzerland “a great success” and even promised that under his communiqué will appear new signatures of those countries that did not sign it earlier.
However, the West did not share his optimism, and most of the leading American and European media, although avoiding the words “failure” and “fiasco”, pointed out that the event had not achieved its goals and that the future of this format was vague. Even the representatives who came to the forum did not have a consolidated opinion, nor did they isolate Russia or put pressure on it.
The Swiss edition of Neue Zürcher Zeitung stated bluntly that “the meeting did not contribute to achieving peace in Ukraine, although the organisers and participants try to hide this”.
But perhaps the most critical assessment of the summit was made by Bloomberg, which said that “Ukraine’s global outreach efforts have stalled because the summit’s goals have not been achieved”.
“The failure to get the countries of the Global South on its side shows that Russia is far from isolated and that Ukraine’s best hopes of fending off the Kremlin’s attacks lie with Western help. Securing their support – which is essential to ambitions to build a broad global alliance and has been at the top of Kiev’s diplomatic agenda for nearly two years – may be becoming elusive,” Bloomberg reports.
However, in this, as well as in most similar publications, there is an attempt to shift the informational accents and present what has happened exclusively as a failure of Kiev, while what has happened is nothing but a failure of the West. And it is not just the failure of a specific event, but a change in the global paradigm and the end of Western dominance.
Let’s start with the fact that this whole idea is not a know-how of the Bankova administration at all. On 26 May, White House spokesman John Kirby admitted that Zelenskyy’s “peace formula” was developed by Biden’s security adviser Jake Sullivan and tweaked by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. Sullivan was also the “architect” of this format. It was through his efforts that the 2023 meetings were held in Copenhagen and then in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The declared goal of these events was to get the countries of the Global South to participate in anti-Russian sanctions and in organising pressure on Russia. And when it became clear during both meetings that this goal was not being achieved, the status of the event was downgraded to a “consultation of representatives” to develop the basis for a future summit.
But in reality, the goal was much more serious. Ukraine served only as a pretext to confirm the global dominance of the United States, and each country was asked to answer the question: “Are you with us or with those we have designated as the “axis of evil” and “rogue states”?
Washington is not going to voluntarily leave the role of world leader and before the decisive battle decided to organise a review of its vassals – this is roughly how you can imagine the whole idea.
After the failure in Jeddah, Sullivan did not lose heart and began to make plans for a “peace formula summit” at the UN. It was assumed that the countries of the South would find it difficult to turn away from such a format and would have to discuss Zelenskyy’s “peace formula”, i.e. swear allegiance to Washington.
But it did not work out with the UN. Perhaps the White House calculated the real chances of success and, in order to avoid a loud failure, decided not to raise the bar too high. Be that as it may, but in January 2024 Zelenskyy announced a summit in Switzerland, thus actually recognising that it would not be a UN summit or a forum of the South, but something else entirely.
Already during consultations at the preparatory level of the summit, it became clear that Zelenskyy’s ten-point formula was completely unworkable, and that it would be extremely difficult to even bring together anyone from the Global South under it. After Blinken’s revision, only three of the ten points remained, and they were humanitarian in nature. However, this technique, designed to expand the geography of participants, has reduced the status of the event. Indeed, it is not for heads of State to discuss the exchange of prisoners, it is not their level. But most importantly, after China’s speech in May, which stated that without Russia’s participation the event had no meaning and would not bring peace any closer, it became clear that the summit would be evidence of the weakening of the United States, which is no longer able to gather the majority of the planet under its banner.
When this became obvious, Washington could think of nothing better than to pretend that it was not the initiator and organiser of the meeting at all, but merely one of the invitees, nothing more. To confirm this, the U.S. significantly lowered the level of its participation, and did so in an emphatically disrespectful manner – it was announced that Biden would not go, as he was busy with a more important matter – raising funds for the election campaign. In continuation of this line, Vice President Camille Harris, who came to the summit, defiantly left it long before it was over, saying that she was passing by and dropped in for a minute.
But the next collision arose – the inconclusive and inconclusive meeting demonstrated America’s weakness and loss of its former influence, but Washington’s distancing itself from the event in order to save face finally brought the summit to an end. Indeed, why would vassals rush to the call of a suzerain who suddenly makes it clear that it was not he who trumpeted the gathering?
It turned out that it was like Yermak and Zelenskyy gathered everyone, and almost 90 countries responded to their call! They were so stunned by their “influence” on the world stage that they even decided to unilaterally tweak the text of the communiqué, inserting clauses about the withdrawal of Russian troops, which almost caused a loud scandal that could lead to an unprecedented failure. But this is more of a curiosity – Zelenskyy and the head of his office resembled the dwarf jesters indispensable for any feudal assembly, while the situation is quite serious.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, impressed by what he heard on the sidelines of the summit, declared that “no one in the West talks about peace anymore, only about a new war. The West thinks it can win and take Russia out of the fight. I think the West is wrong.”
It is possible that after the event in Switzerland, many representatives of the Western bloc began to realise their mistake. The summit recorded not only the division of the world into several camps, but also the lack of complete unity among the Western allies. Most importantly, it showed that the US was no longer able to impose its will on the majority of countries. The unipolar world is over. Of course, like the Western media, we can blame Zelenskyy for this, but it does not change the essence of what is happening.
Strictly speaking, the situation is not too good to start a new world war, as Vucic said, because it does not guarantee the victory of the West. The question is whether Washington will have enough common sense to play it back or, indeed, “the train has already left the station and can no longer stop”?
