Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has largely failed in his attempts to drum up support among Asian countries for his peace formula, ahead of a conference in Switzerland later this month, the Washington Post reported on Monday. Moscow has dismissed Kiev’s roadmap for ending the conflict as unrealistic because it does not correspond to “realities on the ground.”
On Sunday, Zelensky made an appearance at the Shangri-La Dialogue annual security conference in Singapore. He met with several senior officials from the region, including Indonesian president-elect Prabowo Subianto as well as the president and prime minister of Singapore, Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Lawrence Wong.
“We want Asia to know what is going on in Ukraine, Asia to support the end of the war,” Zelensky said at a news conference.
According to the Washington Post, however, Kiev has “failed to generate in Asia the same sort of emotional, existential angst that it has in much of the West.” Part of the reason may be that Asian nations have long been skeptical about the West “preaching about the international order and universal values,” the newspaper writes.
The media outlet quoted Raja Mohan from the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore as explaining that “realists in the chancelleries [of parts of Asia] never believed the [Western] rhetoric because they always knew there was a difference between what the West said and what it did.”
East Timor’s president, José Ramos-Horta, who supports the peace conference, admits that there is a lack of solidarity with regards to the Ukraine conflict in Asia.
“It is viewed in much of the Global South as a European and American and Russian war. Partly, this has to do with the US and Europe’s incomprehensible tolerance of Israel’s brutal war on the Palestinians,” the official told reporters.
At the Singapore conference, Zelensky also lamented that “Ukraine does not have any powerful connections with China because China does not want it,” claiming that Beijing has become an “instrument” in Moscow’s hands.
While more than 100 countries have said they will be sending their delegations to the Swiss-hosted peace summit, the US and China will either skip the gathering or send emissaries rather than their heads of state.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa will not be attending either, his office told TASS last month. According to media reports, his Brazilian counterpart Lula da Silva will be absent as well.
In April, Russian President Vladimir Putin described the upcoming conference as “nonsense,” given that Moscow has not been invited. His spokesman, Dmitry Peskov argued last Tuesday that “getting together and seriously discussing the Ukraine conflict without our [Russia’s] participation is absurd.”