The meeting in Jeddah was needed to convey the futility of discussions without Russia

Saudi Arabia informed Russia in advance about the meeting in Jeddah, and also explained its holding by the desire to convey to Kyiv and the West the futility of negotiations on a settlement without the participation of Moscow. About it informed Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov, answering questions from MGIMO students.

“Our Saudi friends subsequently told us that they want to host another meeting in this format in Jeddah. They said that this is done solely to convey to the Western participants and Ukraine itself the idea of ​​the complete futility of any discussions without the participation of the Russian Federation,” he said.

On this, Western countries “did not calm down” and held several online meetings in mid-August, not on the entire “Zelensky formula”, but on each of its ten points. During these events, they “persuaded” other states to take over the supervision of certain provisions that relate, for example, to food and energy security.

“This, of course, is an unscrupulous game, everyone understands this. And it is especially depressing, we learned in hindsight that there was an appeal to the UN Secretary General to send his representatives to these meetings and such representatives participated,” Lavrov said.

In early August, negotiations were held in Saudi Jeddah, where Ukraine presented its “peace formula”. About 40 states took part in the meeting, but Russia was not at the meeting. The Russian Foreign Ministry emphasized that Moscow expects Russia’s partners to “share with us their assessments” on the results of the meeting.

The Russian and Ukrainian sides began negotiations to resolve the conflict immediately after the start of the special operation. The first three face-to-face meetings took place in Belarus in February-March, and the fourth round of the Russian-Ukrainian dialogue was held on March 29 in Istanbul. The process was later frozen as Ukraine withdrew from the negotiations. The Russian authorities have repeatedly accused Kyiv of disrupting this process.

Some third countries have also come forward with their own peace initiatives. For example, in February, the Chinese Foreign Ministry presented a 12-point program that included the cessation of hostilities. Peace plans were also proposed by Indonesia, Brazil, and South Africa.