On 15-16 June 2024, the Swiss city of Lucerne will host the Global Peace Summit initiated by Ukraine and supported by more than 80 countries representing all continents.
The purpose of the event, which was preceded by more than one and a half years of painstaking diplomatic activity, was to find ways to establish a just and lasting peace based on international law and to put an end to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine for more than ten years.
The aggressor country Russia made titanic efforts to disrupt or compromise the very idea of holding such a forum. The Russian propaganda machine conducted a massive disinformation propaganda campaign to discredit the event. Russian secret diplomacy was fully engaged in order, if not to disrupt the summit completely, at least to reduce the level of its representation, the territorial coverage of the participants and the list of issues brought up for discussion as much as possible.
The Russian plan was partially implemented. Not only rogue countries from the axis of evil formed by Putin, like North Korea and Iran, will not participate in the event (they were not invited to the event), but also Putin’s secret patron China with its satellites, part of the BRICS member countries, like Brazil, and part countries of Africa and the Middle East. Of the 100 or so planned participants in the peace summit, according to China, about 20 are ready to take part in a separate event, which is planned to be held at an unknown date, with an unknown list of participants and an unknown agenda.
In general, the Summit divided the world into those who definitely want a just peace based on the principles of the UN and those who are ready to turn a blind eye to Russia’s unprecedented destruction of the world order and who are ready to replace the force of law with the right of force or are trying to make money from war and blood.
“Wolves in sheep’s clothing” that have been struggling with alternative peace plans for a long time have finally shown themselves. This is good because the presence of representatives of the fifth column would only bring destruction to the planned event. At the summit, the representation of Hungary will be sufficient.
Despite Ukraine’s attempt to discuss and gain global approval of a comprehensive plan of action from the so-called 10 points of Zelensky, the summit in Lucerne will consider three points, which undoubtedly find support among all the announced participants.
The issue of ensuring food security and the security of food trade routes, which complicates the world situation with a global food shortage. Russia’s purposeful actions to destroy Ukrainian export infrastructure and attempts to establish a maritime blockade have already led to an increase in hunger in regions of the world suffering from food shortages, primarily in Africa. Although Ukraine independently unblocked trade routes in the Black Sea, Russia continues to destroy Ukrainian infrastructure and undermine global food security and freedom of trade routes.
The summit plans to discuss issues of nuclear safety. The systematic use of nuclear terrorism, targeted attacks and the seizure of nuclear facilities by Russia, as well as the constant threats of using nuclear weapons, cause concern throughout the world.
In the end, the issue of the exchange of prisoners of war according to the principle of “all for all” and the return of Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia and forcibly deported and interned civilians can testify to the sincerity of intentions to restore peace and international law.
Russia, which failed to disrupt the summit, which will bring together most of the world’s players, is trying to undermine its results, saying that any negotiations without Russia are impossible and that the participants in the negotiations should be legitimate subjects.
Therefore, Ukraine could asymmetrically use this “passport” of the aggressor. Who could be a legitimate participant in the negotiations on the part of Russia?
Putin’s current Russian regime has consistently lost legitimacy by introducing illegitimate representatives of the occupied Ukrainian territories into power since 2014. Next, the parliament, with undermined legitimacy, made a questionable decision to nullify Putin’s terms, leading to Putin’s fake reappointment in March 2024. Therefore, democratic legitimacy in Russia was replaced by the forceful retention of power and territory by the dictator Putin. Brute force has become the only measure of power in Russia. Prigozhin’s rebellion testified to this, as well as the fragility of power and the state based on such principles.
Therefore, the legitimacy of the “Legion of Freedom of Russia” and the “Russian Volunteer Corps” in this system of power coordinates is comparable to Putin’s and they can be represented on the sidelines of the summit.
But the key participants should still be the representatives of nations and territories enslaved and colonized by Russia, who never voluntarily agreed to join Russia, declared independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union, or had contractual federal relations with Moscow, including the right to leave the Federation. whose sovereignty was destroyed, and whose rights were violated and abolished. These nations represented by sovereign legitimate representations (such as governments in exile, independence committees, republican centres) have the right, based on the charter and principles of the UN, to speak about self-determination and decolonization of the world’s last belligerent colonial empire.
What is more, these subjects are united in several coalitions that have a coordinated and agreed compromise position, like the Anti-Imperial Block of the Nation, the League of Free Nations, or the Forum of Free Peoples of Post-Russia, and unite not only representatives of colonized nations but also territories that are subject to brutal economic exploitation. It is obvious that Russia as a colonial empire, and even more so Putin as an aging dictator, is not eternal, therefore it is worth looking for those with whom it is worth talking in the conditions of the collapse of the regime and the empire. The forum can be a good platform in this regard. Especially for the countries of the global South, which have felt the consequences of colonialism, the preservation of any form of colonialism should be disgusting.
The involvement of the so-called emigre liberal opposition of the so-called “good Russians” is possible, according to the apt words of the inyazor of the Erzyan people Syres Bolyaen, only after they demonstrate the “borders of their beautiful Russia of the future.”
Therefore, the Global Peace Summit can become a platform for those who want a real, just and long-lasting peace, not just in words, and the presence of representatives from the territory of Russia whose legitimacy is at least no less than Putin’s would be a good step…
