NEW DELHI: India will participate in a conclave in Saudi Arabia involving major countries from the West and the Global South to consider talks to bring about peace in Ukraine.
Russia, which has been excluded, has denounced the talks while Ukraine said the meeting in the resort city of Jeddah could be a stepping stone to a peace summit.
With Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy hoping that such meetings would lead to a peace summit in autumn, there is speculation that the G20 summit in India could be the venue. All nations involved in peace talks will be represented at the G20 by their top leader and it would be a moment’s notice to arrange a meeting on its sidelines.
India’s participation in the talks is in line with its approach that dialogue and diplomacy is the best way forward, said MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi. However, he said as yet there was no move to hold a meeting on Ukraine on the sidelines of the G20 summit, as Zelenskyy seems to be alluding to.
The meeting which Kyiv and the West have organised in Saudi Arabia based on the Ukrainian President’s “peace formula” is a farce and is intended to forge an anti-Russian coalition, said Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. The meeting was a “bait” for those countries that are honestly seeking a peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian conflict and these countries had been invited “with the aim of developing some kind of supposed peace initiative, to settle the situation”, she said.
On July 29, The Wall Street Journal had quoted sources as saying that Saudi Arabia planned to hold peace talks on Ukraine in Jeddah on August 5-6. Senior officials from 30 countries were ready to attend the meeting but Russia was excluded.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s chief adviser Akif Cagatay Kilic will represent Ankara at the talks. The talks will discuss the latest situation in Ukraine and see views exchanged on peace between Russia and Ukraine, said a Turkish news agency.