Summary:
- The Jeddah talks are aimed at building a coalition of support behind Ukraine and addressing issues beyond the immediate conflict.
- China is attempting to position itself as a potential interlocutor but maintains an ambivalent stance due to its energy and defense relationship with Russia.
- The Ukrainian 10-point plan and Russia's position are fundamentally incompatible, making a satisfactory peace settlement unlikely.
Well, there hasn't been a very definite positive outcome from these talks. But then we have to remember that calling them peace negotiations is a little bit misleading, because they're not negotiations with the country that is actually waging this war with Russia. Instead, as Russia quite reasonably points out, it's an attempt to build a coalition of support behind Ukraine. It's an attempt to gather together all of those countries that could potentially be at risk from the kind of tactics that Russia is using. Because the 10-point peace plan that's been laid out by the Ukrainian president has some points in it that really aren't a great deal to do with Ukraine at all. It's about nuclear security, food security, preventing environmental acts of terrorism. So any country that disagrees with those things is automatically going to be ranging itself against Russia, because those are the methods that Russia is using against Ukraine.
The situation remains highly complex, and the prospects for a peaceful resolution to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine are uncertain.