Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s former defense minister, Sergei Shoigu, has said that Ukraine’s incursion into Russia means there is no chance of negotiations to end the war started by his boss after several countries emerged as potential mediators for peace.
Shoigu, now head of Russia’s Security Council, said on Tuesday there would be no talks between Moscow and Kyiv “until we throw them out of our territory,” state news agency Tass reported.
But Shoigu’s view seemed to contradict that of Putin, who told the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok on September 5 he had “never refused” to negotiate with Kyiv, even as it claimed to have captured about 500 square miles of Russian territory.
Putin previously said he would negotiate only if Kyiv relinquished four partially occupied regions that Moscow claims to have annexed in September 2022, terms that are unacceptable to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Shoigu’s statement came a day after Austria became the latest country to propose being a mediator to end the war.
Austria
“In terms of potential mediators, a country needs to secure adequate locations for peace talks, have strong logistics, be politically acceptable to both parties and have formidable diplomatic services,” Vuk Vuksanovic, associate at the London School of Economics think tank LSE IDEAS, told Newsweek.
To that end, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s post on X, formerly Twitter, said that Vienna could “support a just and lasting peace based on international law and to serve as a venue for negotiations.” Nehammer’s post said his government had noted Putin’s “openness to peace talks with Ukraine” and has previously called for de-escalation and peace talks.
“Austria can host talks, especially as Vienna is a UN capital, but it cannot meaningfully shape them,” said Peter Rough, director at the Center on Europe and Eurasia at the Hudson Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank.
However, “it is too small and has nothing to offer,” he told Newsweek.
“Any statements coming out of Austria right now are in the context of the federal election they will hold at the end of the month,” he said. “The FPÖ [Freedom Party of Austria] is leading in the polls and is very critical of Ukraine, which explains some of the maneuvering.”
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Hungary
As a critic of continued Western military aid to Ukraine and Putin’s closest ally in the European Union, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has positioned himself as someone who could end hostilities.
During his first trip to Kyiv in more than a decade, Orbán held talks with Zelensky on July 2, when he said he had asked the Ukrainian president to consider a ceasefire before the international summit Kyiv hopes to hold later this year. On July 5, Orbán met Putin in Moscow and three days later spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
On Monday, the Hungarian leader talked up his so-called “peace mission” for Ukraine is ongoing and hinted at a breakthrough with a possible “spectacular” appearance in September, according to the Hungarian news outlet ATV.
However, Rough considers Orbán’s statements as political initiatives aimed at scoring points.
“These are not peace proposals that scope out an end to the fighting,” he said. “Besides, hostility between Budapest and Kyiv makes Hungary an unthinkable mediator for talks.”
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Brazil, China, India
During the Eastern Economic Forum, Putin referred to three other countries that make up the BRICS acronym as possible brokers to end the war that he launched.
“The Chinese People’s Republic, Brazil, India. I am in contact with my partners,” Putin said. “We have trust and confidence in one another.”
But Vuksanovic said that China, along with Hungary, will be discounted as potential mediators right away because they are too close to Russia.
“Moreover, the U.S. would not allow China to have the glory of a peacemaker,” he added.
During a visit to Ukraine in August, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told Zelensky he is prepared to play a personal role to bring peace and both sides will have to “look for ways to come out of this crisis.”
But the previous month, Zelensky criticized Modi for hugging Putin during a trip to Moscow on a day of deadly Russian strikes, including one on Kyiv’s biggest children’s hospital.
“India has the capital of being on good terms with Russia, and Modi had a good visit to Ukraine, but it is unclear if India wants that role and whether others will accept it,” Vuksanovic said.
“Still, it is all speculation until Russia, Ukraine and the U.S. decide to go for the talks. There is no indication that either one of the three has an interest in that initiative at this point.”
Meanwhile, Rough believes that because it is the smaller party in the conflict and the defender, Ukraine requires security guarantees against the much larger country and aggressor for any ceasefire to hold.
“As an unaligned state in South Asia, India won’t offer those security guarantees,” he added, “and no one believes China would restrain Russia on behalf of Ukraine in the event of renewed aggression.”
International negotiations expert Ursula F. Ott, professor of International Business at Nottingham Trent University in England, said that China would look toward a long bargaining horizon when negotiating.
“Not wanting to lose face will lead to a more consensus-oriented approach,” she told Newsweek. “The Russian negotiation behavior will be more direct and with that the difficulty of dealing with the rejection of offers from the Russian side will be more complex. Conflict avoidance is strong on the Chinese side.”
Turkey
There has been criticism of a pivot by Turkey away from NATO toward Russia and China along with scrutiny of the ties between Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Last week, Ankara said it would seek membership in BRICS in a move that follows interest in joining the Beijing and Moscow-led Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
On the sidelines of the SCO, Erdogan said that Ankara could be an intermediary in the Ukraine war, although the Kremlin spokesman has rejected this.
However, Turkey did help with a deal that later collapsed but for a while ensured grain could be shipped safely from Ukraine’s Black Sea port. Turkey has not sanctioned Russia but has supplied Kyiv with weapons such as Bayraktar TB2 attack drones.
“Perhaps Turkey could host talks, as they have during the grain initiative and over the prisoner’s exchanges,” said Rough, “but it would require heavy American and Western European participation as well for anything serious to stick.”
At a peace summit in Lucerne, Switzerland, in June that Moscow was not invited to, Kyiv said it will not engage in direct negotiations with Russia, although the prospect that a broad coalition can push Zelensky’s 10-point peace formula to end the war seems a long way off.
Retired U.S. Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State General Colin Powell, told Newsweek that he did not believe Washington would allow any of the countries in the frame to act as peace brokers before the U.S. election.
As a figurehead mediator, “the U.S. might allow Indonesia, New Zealand, even Brazil or Mexico, but we would be a strong presence in the background,” Wilkerson said. “After the elections, if Putin were willing, we might mediate with assistance from, say India or Turkey or Switzerland.”
Martial law in Ukraine imposed by Zelensky because of the war prevented the presidential elections being held in March when his term officially ended, leading Russia to question Zelensky’s legitimacy as head of state.
But Wilkerson, senior fellow at Eisenhower Media Network, said that Putin would insist that the real mediators be him or his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, “and the then-leader of Ukraine, duly elected in new elections.”