The diplomatic heavyweight mediated a deal in April between Russia and Ukraine over the exchange of 48 children separated by the war.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he is in talks with Qatar alongside India, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, and Türkiye over the second peace summit as the war with Russia continues without a ceasefire in sight.
Zelenskyy’s remarks came in a press conference on Sunday in Kyiv with Indian journalists on the sidelines of a visit from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the country. Modi’s trip marked the first visit by an Indian prime minister to Ukraine since it declared independence in 1991.
During the press briefing, Zelenskyy said he would support India’s hosting of the second peace summit among other countries in the Global South.
“But I want to be frank, and this applies not only to India, but to any state that would be positive about hosting a second summit. We will not be able to hold a peace summit in a country that has not yet joined the peace summit communique,” he said.
Zelenskyy gathered world leaders in Switzerland in June for the first summit to garner support for the Ukraine Peace Formula, a peace plan that he presented during 2022’s G-20 Summit in Indonesia, entailing 10 points to end the war on his country.
Qatar has maintained a balanced foreign policy since the beginning of the deadly war between Russia and Ukraine in February 2022 and has since held discussions with officials from both countries.
The diplomatic heavyweight mediated a deal in April between Russia and Ukraine over the exchange of 48 children separated by the war. The deal aimed to return 29 children to Ukraine and the remaining 19 to Russia.
Ukraine believes that Russia took more than 19,000 Ukrainian children since the beginning of the war and it remains unclear how many have returned to their homeland.
Meanwhile, a report by The Washington Post on August 17 said Ukraine and Russia were scheduled to send their delegations to Qatar during the same month for negotiations over mutually halting attacks on energy and power infrastructure.
Diplomats and officials privy to the matter had told the American news outlet that the talks derailed following Ukraine’s surprise attack on Russia’s western Kursk region on August 6.
A diplomat briefed on the talks noted that Russian officials postponed their meeting with Qatari officials following the incursion, noting that Moscow “did not call off the talks.”
The Ukrainian presidential office also told The Post at the time that the meeting in Doha was postponed “due to the situation in the Middle East”, instead taking place virtually on August 22.
