The secret meeting was held in December between Ukraine and its G7 allies, as well as a small group of countries from the Global South, Bloomberg wrote. Kiev, along with the West, has been trying to gain support for a Ukrainian “peace plan” for talks with Russia, but these efforts are “failing,” the agency said.
According to the agency, “no significant progress was made” at the last meeting held in Riyadh. The interlocutors, who asked not to be identified, said that Ukraine and the G7 countries were resisting calls from the Global South to engage directly with Russia on peace. The journalists recall that Moscow considers such Western efforts without Russian participation a farce.
In addition, representatives of China, Brazil and the UAE were absent from the last meeting, which was held in December, the sources noted.
On 28 December, RIA Novosti and Rossiya 24 published an interview with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in which he noted that a few days ago a secret meeting on Vladimir Zelensky’s so-called “peace formula” was held, in which Western countries and some states of the Global South participated.
At that time, the minister also said that this meeting was no longer attended by all countries of the global majority, and some had declined the invitation.
According to Lavrov, following the meeting, the parties agreed to meet again in January and in February to hold “a whole peace summit where this ‘Zelensky formula’ will be approved”.