Saudi Arabia will host a peace summit in August to end Ukraine Conflict
Saudi Arabia will host a peace summit in early August seeking to find a way to start negotiations over the ongoing Ukraine conflict, an official said Saturday night. The kingdom, Russia or Ukraine did not immediately acknowledge the planned talks.
The summit will be held in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as no authorization had been given to publicly discuss the summit.
Those taking part in the summit will include Brazil, India, South Africa and several other countries and also Ukraine, the official said. A high-level official from U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration also is expected to attend, Russia is not invited, the official said.
Details regarding the summit, however, remain in flux and the official did not offer dates for the talks. The Wall Street Journal, which first reported on the summit, said the talks would take place Aug. 5 and 6 with some 30 countries attending, citing “diplomats involved in the discussion.”
Saudi officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press, nor did Ukraine’s Embassy in Riyadh. News of the summit comes after U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan visited the kingdom on Thursday.
The official who spoke to the AP said the summit would be the next step after talks that took place in Copenhagen in June.
Saudi Arabia’s hosting of the talks come as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in May attended an Arab League summit in Jeddah. Arab nations largely have remained neutral since the start of Ukraine Russia war in February 2022, as they have close military and economic ties to Moscow.
Saudi Arabia also has maintained a close relationship with Russia as part of the OPEC+ group. The organization’s oil production cuts, even as war has boosted energy prices, notwithstanding angered Biden and American lawmakers. Actually with India and China looking after their own national interests have turned the world into multipolar, so even Saudi Arabia has done the same.
Hosting such talks will help raise the profile of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has sought to reach a detente with Iran and push for a peace in the kingdom’s years long war in Yemen. Though relations remain strained between Riyadh and the West over the 2018 killing and dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, which U.S. intelligence agencies assess that Prince Mohammed ordered.
