Swiss summit gives Georgia and Ukraine presidents chance to ...

A two-day summit on peace prospects in Ukraine, held June 15-16 at a Swiss alpine resort, resulted in a vague endorsement of a negotiated end to the stalemated Russia-Ukraine war.

The outcome of the Bürgenstock conference does not mean that the reservoir of Western support for Kyiv’s war effort is tapped out. Far from it. Prior to the Swiss gathering, the United States and Ukraine signed a 10-year security pact, under which Washington will help Ukraine build up its defense capabilities. Meanwhile, NATO reaffirmed its readiness to help train Ukrainian forces, while keeping “500,000 [alliance] troops at high readiness across all domains.” 

Russia was not invited to the Swiss summit, and Moscowurged its allies to ignore it. The Kremlin’s pre-summit saber-rattling revolved around President Vladimir Putin’s trademark fear-mongering about nuclear weapons: “We are inching dangerously close to a point of no return.” He also proffered a plan to end the fighting that would deprive Ukraine of control of a large swathe of its territory. The proposal was summarily dismissed by US and other Western officials.

Representatives of Central Asian states, not wanting to incite the Kremlin’s ire, stayed away from Switzerland over the weekend. Of Russia’s other southern neighbors, only Armenia and Georgia were represented. The two countries are both making geopolitical transitions, with Armenia drawing closer to the West, while Georgia is pushing away.

The Georgian delegation was led by President Salome Zourabichvili, an outspoken opponent of the Georgian Dream-dominated government’s embrace of illiberal policies that have caused a fracture in Tbilisi’s relations with the European Union and United States. Zourabichvili met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on the summit’s sidelines, exploring bilateral cooperation and mulling security challenges. They also jointly expressed a desire for their respective states to maintain a geopolitical course toward integration with European political, economic and security institutions. 

Given Zourabichvili’s largely ceremonial role within Georgia’s political structure, her endorsement of continued integration efforts is more symbolic than substantive for Georgia.

Armen Grigoryan, the secretary of the Armenian Security Council, was Armenia’s top representative at the summit. His presence underscored the Armenian government’s determination to break free of Russia’s geopolitical gravitational pull. Even so, Armenia was among the nations that refrained from signing the final communique.

That document added little to what has already been emphasized in other formats. In seeking to promote peace around the edges of the conflict, the communique called for the return of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant to the full sovereign control of Ukraine. It demanded free, full, and safe access for commercial vessels to ports in the Black and Azov Seas. It also urged the exchange of all prisoners of war and the return of unlawfully displaced Ukrainian children.