A third session of Ukraine-backed talks to end the Russian invasion begins on Saturday in Malta with representatives from around 50 countries, in the absence of Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hopes the two-day meeting, which follows similar meetings this summer in Jeddah and Copenhagen, will build support for his 10-point plan to end to the war triggered by the Russian invasion of February 2022.
Diplomatic advisers from around fifty countries as well as international institutions are expected to participate, more than the approximately 40 nations who took part in the Saudi summit in August.
kyiv hailed the growing list of participants, which includes countries such as Turkey, Brazil and India, as a sign of global support for the process.
“This meeting is a strong signal that unity is preserved around Ukraine,” said the head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, Andriï Iermak.
Mr. Zelensky is pushing his ten-point peace plan, which calls for Russia to withdraw all its troops outside Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders.
But Russia – which proclaimed the annexation of the four Ukrainian regions of Lugansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhia in September 2022 and that of Crimea in 2014 – has rejected any settlement that would involve ceding these territories.
“It is obvious that steps [comme la réunion de Malte des 28 et 29 octobre] have absolutely no future, they are just counterproductive,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova on Thursday, calling the meeting a “deeply biased and anti-Russian event, which has nothing to do with a peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian crisis.
Participants from all over the world
Organizers are hoping for a joint declaration from the Malta summit, after the previous two meetings ended without the adoption of such a document.
Among the participants are the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom, supporters of kyiv, as well as Turkey, which offered itself as mediator between Ukraine and Russia.
These discussions, which notably concern respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, have the particularity of seeing the participation of countries allied to Russia or which have refrained from condemning its attack, such as Brazil, South Africa, and India. China has not confirmed its presence even though it participated in the last meeting.
Representatives from countries as diverse as Australia, Bahrain, Chile, Georgia, Japan, Kuwait, Mexico, Qatar and Thailand are also expected, some via video link.
The meeting was supposed to take place in a Middle Eastern country but was moved to Malta after the outbreak of war between Hamas and Israel, according to a European diplomat.
Speaking to Ukrainian television on Thursday, Mr Iermak said the meeting was a new step towards preparing for a leaders’ summit on peace.
The discussions will focus on five key areas: food security, energy security, nuclear security, humanitarian issues and the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, he said.
Ukraine is bracing for a grueling winter after more than a year and a half of bloody war and deadly Russian bombings, with Kiev anticipating massive new strikes on its energy infrastructure as its counter-offensive has so far failed to penetrate deep into the Russian defenses.