The next round of talks discussing Kyiv’s so-called ‘Peace Formula’ will be held on January 14th in Davos, Switzerland, a day before the annual World Economic Forum’s annual meeting. The talks were announced by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on X on Sunday, December 10th, and confirmed by the Swiss foreign ministry.
The meeting will build on earlier discussions during three previous rounds of talks organized this year, in Denmark (June), in Saudi Arabia (August), and in Malta (October). The latter was attended by the representatives of 66 states and international organizations, according to Kyiv.
The Davos conference will be co-hosted by Switzerland and Ukraine and hopes to further the implementation of Zelensky’s ten-point “Peace Formula,” a set of demands that include the withdrawal of Russian troops, the establishment of a Nuremberg-style special tribunal to prosecute Russian war crimes, and the complete restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, which is “not up for negotiations.”
This means, however, that Zelensky still refuses to enter into any negotiations with Russia and instead sticks to the maximalist “victory-at-all-cost narrative”—fighting until every inch of territory is retaken— despite the apparent failure of the Ukrainian counterattack.
The problem is that while the president’s belief in the ultimate victory stays “immovable, verging on the messianic,” as Time recently described it, “Zelensky’s associates themselves are extremely skeptical about the [current] policy.”
Most recently, it was Oleksii Arestovych—Zelensky’s former strategic communications adviser until January 2023—who called for finally entering into peace talks with Russia in an interview with the Irish Sun published on Monday.
Arestovych said Zelensky’s cultivated “hero persona” has locked Ukraine into a never-ending conflict, but with the death toll rising to around 300,000, it was time to start discussing peace terms—including dropping all NATO aspirations for the sake of survival of the country.
Zelensky “thinks not about the national interest but about his own position,” the former top adviser said.
It remains to see how the Davos meeting would get Ukraine any closer to peace, as none of the previous meetings under the same format produced any palpable results. Reacting to the news, Moscow said the Peace Formula conference is “incapable of leading to peace” as it’s only trying to “push through Ukrainian ultimatums” without any discussions with the other side.
