The Peace Summit in Switzerland highlighted Ukraine's complicated relationship with countries in the Global South. The salient lack of empathy for Ukraine in the Global South surprises many observers. Ukraine should change its narrative. Rather than stressing the fight against autocracy it should frame its anti-colonial struggle as a defense of national dignity, identity and sovereignty, Ukrainian political analyst Mykola Riabchuk writes.
Dismantling works underway after the Summit on Peace in Ukraine in Switzerland. Photo: EPA / Urs Flueeler
After a series of minor but painful military defeats, largely caused by the lack of much-needed ammunition, Ukraine also experienced several diplomatic setbacks at various fronts, even though Ukrainian officials still try to keep brave faces. Some of them were predictable – like a declarative ‘membership bridge’ (the so-called 'Ukraine Compact') instead of the much coveted road map to the North Atlantic alliance, offered to Ukrainians at the NATO summit in Washington, or the half-year Hungarian presidency in the EU, assumed in July, that enables a small but quite naughty country to undermine even more effectively Ukraine’s international position and chances for a just and reliable peace.
But the meager results of the international peace summit in Switzerland, long prepared and vehemently promoted by Kyiv as the arguably first step toward a peace settlement, came largely as a surprise. Shortly before the conference, president Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed his high expectations related to the event, which he saw as a means to attain more international solidarity and support, in particular from the Global South. 'The more such countries we have on our side ... the more Russia will have to deal with this,' he said in an interview with AFP.
Reluctance at the Peace Summit
Some attendees of the conference were reluctant to participate, as they hesitated between the normative UN principles and practical interests in relations with Russia. To placate them, the conference organizers picked up for discussion only the three least controversial issues from Volodymyr Zelensky’s ten-point ‘peace formula’, announced back in 2022. This did not help much, however.
Less than half of the UN members accepted the invitation, and even less (80 of them) signed the final document, that addressed the problems of nuclear powers safety, food security and the exchange of prisoners. China was glaringly absent at the conference, and several other international ‘heavyweights’ like India, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates were represented by lower-level diplomats who, notably, did not sign the final declaration. It was probably the reference to the UN Charter and 'respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty … as a basis for achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine' that made the document unpalatable for some Russia-friendly or Russia-aware governments.
The regress was obvious: back in March 2022, as many as 141 states (of 193 UN members) supported the UNGA resolution that condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine and called for withdrawal of Russian troops from the country (only 5 countries voted against, 35 abstained, and 12 were not present).
Shifting positions
There are probably many reasons for this shift – from the apparent frustration with the protracted war and a desire to end it as fast as possible at any cost (the cost of Ukraine, de facto), to all kinds of pragmatic (one may say opportunistic and cynical) interests in relations with Moscow and a reluctance to harm them with an ‘inappropriate’ vote.
Israel’s brutal response to the Hamas’ terrorist attack, condoned by Western governments, contributed to the negative attitude of the Global South countries to the ‘collective West’ and, collaterally, to Ukraine as the alleged Western ally (or client). For Ukrainians, as British columnist Patrick Wintour aptly noticed, 'Gaza has been a triple tragedy – it diverted world attention, it discredited the concept of rules-based order, and it divided the west, weakening Biden and the EU'.
Part of this harm was self-inflicted, since Ukrainian leaders were probably too fast and straightforward in their expression of unconditional support for Israel: Hamas and Russia, president Zelensky declared shortly after Hamas massacred Israeli civilians, are the 'same evil, and the only difference is that there is a terrorist organization that attacked Israel and here is a terrorist state that attacked Ukraine'. After Israel, in response, massacred thousands of Palestinians, the situation ceased to be as simple and clear: Putin and his daily terror in Ukraine were far away, while Netanyahu and his brutality was nearby, on all newsstands and TV screens.
The existing bias against Ukraine deepened, even though Ukraine never had anything to do with Western colonial adventures
It is debatable whether Zelensky’s 'immediate and forceful support for Israel in its fight against Hamas has imperiled almost a year of concerted efforts by Kyiv to win the support of Arab and Muslim nations in its war against Russia', as the Ukraine-based FT journalist Isabel Koshiw contended. The pro-Russian sympathies and anti-Western resentments in that part of the world were too deep and projected upon Ukraine by default, automatically, regardless of what president Zelensky said.
But the existing bias deepened, even though Ukraine never had anything to do with Western colonial adventures in the past or neocolonial policies at present. And Kyiv’s relations with Tel Aviv have always been rather lukewarm, especially on the Israeli side; Netanyahu has actually maintained much closer contacts with Putin than with Zelensky.
Double standards
Paradoxically, the very states that accuse the West of racism and double standards tend to apply the same double standards and a kind of racism à retour to Ukraine. Some, like South Africa, denounce Israel’s war crimes against Palestinians in the International Criminal Court but persistently refuse to condemn Russian crimes in Ukraine – as if Ukrainian children and civilians deserve less empathy just because they are white, or because they are murdered by 'Africa-friendly' Russians rather than America-friendly Israelis.
Slavoj Žižek, a renowned leftist philosopher who has always been very critical about Western imperialism and neocolonialism, was surprised and even shocked by these double standards, expressed by the vocal supporters of the Palestinian resistance to Israeli colonization: 'Why is Ukrainian resistance to Russian colonization less worthy of support? [...] After all, Russia’s imperialist war is itself an act of colonialism [...] It is obscene to blame Ukraine for Russian acts of destruction, or to mischaracterize the Ukrainians’ heroic resistance as a rejection of peace [...] Ukraine is indeed “provoking” Russia by refusing to submit to its imperial ambitions, even in the face of desperate odds. At this point, the only way that it could stop provoking its aggressive revisionist neighbor would be to lay down and surrender [...] But surrendering to imperialism brings neither peace nor justice.'
'It is obscene to blame Ukraine for Russian acts of destruction, or to mischaracterize the Ukrainians’ heroic resistance as a rejection of peace'
Indeed, the salient lack of empathy for Ukraine in the Global South surprises many observers, Ukrainians in particular, since the entire situation looks crystal clear to them: Russian aggression leaves little doubt about who is the victim and who is the offender, whose cause is just and whose deeds are deplorable; it leaves no space for the ambiguity that often accompanies international, let alone domestic, conflicts.
Russia is clearly waging a neo-imperial war against its former colony, scrapping numerous international documents that it signed in the past – from the 1945 UN Charter and 1975 Helsinki Act to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum and the 1997 Russia-Ukraine Friendship and Cooperation Treaty. All of them stipulated the inviolability of the internationally recognized borders and proscribed their arbitrary unilateral changes.
Pragmatic considerations
The fact that virtually no states except for a few Moscow clients and kin dictatorships took Russia’s side in the UN indicates rather clearly that there is no confusion about who is who in this war. The abstention of so many states in the UN vote against Russia did not result from their misunderstanding of the unfolding events or any confusion of moral principles at the normative level but, rather, from pragmatic (one may say opportunistic and cynical) considerations. This forces us to scrutinize these considerations and to address, wherever possible, underlying concerns.
The primary reason for non-engagement (not taking sides) in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict stems rather clearly from practical interests that each state duly pursues on the international arena. In most cases it is a national interest related to economic benefits from trade and other forms of cooperation with Russia (as well as with Russia-friendly China) and a reluctance to harm those relations by an ‘inappropriate’ vote in the UN, let alone by joining the international sanctions against the specific state.
The relative poverty of many Global South countries makes them vulnerable vis-à-vis any external economic pressure and rather unwilling (or even unable) to undertake any steps that may undermine their economic conditions. And since many of these states are ruled by autocrats, it is easier for them to cooperate with similar regimes in Moscow and Beijing. The national interests in these cases might be secondary, while the ruling group’s personal interests in security and survival are usually prioritized.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky speaking at the Global Peace Summit in Ukraine. Photo: Michael Buholzer/Pool/AFP
Whatever the true motives of the national rulers, they need some ideological justification for their dubious, essentially immoral international politics. The easiest way to avoid any moral responsibility is to pretend complete ignorance or fully rely on Russian ‘alternative truth’. But that becomes increasingly difficult in open societies with a free flow of information, especially under the mounting evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine.
Instead, more whimsical (and perfidious) strategies of ‘blame games’ and ‘whataboutism’ are applied, helping to relativize, obfuscate and attenuate everything, thereby making any objective moral judgement rather impossible. Whataboutism is really unbeatable since it allows to dismiss any accusation, however serious and concrete, with a counter-accusation, usually irrelevant to the discussed matter.
Any reminder that Russia violates international law and commit war crimes in Ukraine and elsewhere is rebuffed by a simple switch of topic of conversation and diverting attention to somebody else’s wrongdoings. 'And what about Americans (or Brits, or French)?' they usually say, as if one crime metaphysically offsets the other, and Israelis who kill Palestinians make Russian killings of Ukrainians less abominable.
The ultimate result of these discursive manipulations is that Ukraine is removed from the screen, ceases to be a part of the ongoing debate, falls out from the stage where a millenarian struggle between the demonized West and dignified Russia unfolds. They deprive Ukrainians of agency, downgrade them to position of pawns, passive objects, without any will, dignity and sovereignty of their own. Ukraine, ironically, becomes a collateral victim of international blame games, even though it had nothing to do with the Western colonial enterprises in the past, nor bears any responsibility nowadays for the Western alleged misdeeds in Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia, or elsewhere.
Ukraine becomes a victim of international blame games, though it had nothing to do with Western colonial endeavours
Ukrainians, like all Eastern Europeans, have had historically very difficult relations with the West and hold their own anti-imperial resentments. But they cannot decouple themselves from the West just because Russia is not far away from them but nearby, and poses a much greater threat to their freedom, sovereignty and very existence than all Western powers may pose together. But this also means that in the southerners’ perception, they also cannot be decoupled from the collective West: they are a part of it, either now or in the future, either firmly embraced by the Western allies or just put on track toward the full-fledged, institutionalized membership of the ‘collective West’ (which means also ascending to the core of the ‘world-economy’ from the current periphery).
Ukrainians are included, and this makes their position in southerners’ eyes fundamentally different, essentially incomparable with their own – regardless of all the Ukrainian arguments about their colonial past, Russian imperial dominance and still unfinished national liberation struggle. Poor, if any, knowledge of Ukraine’s national history and today’s social reality (often mediated by Moscow), and an overblown, artificial image of Russia (and the Soviet Union) as a beacon of global anticolonial struggle certainly influence the perception of both countries in the Global South, facilitating the spread of Moscow-baked propaganda.
Changing relations
Ukrainians would like to initiate counter-propagandistic or educational measures to change its perception by the Global South. However, these efforts are constrained by an apparent asymmetry of Ukraine’s historical, cultural-anthropological, and geopolitical position vis-à-vis postcolonial nations of the Global South.
The structural inequalities of the essentially neocolonial ‘world-economy’ and the perceived, or worse, actual double standards of the ‘first-world’ states reinvigorate old colonial traumas and amplify old grudges. It is a structural problem beyond Ukraine’s reach that engenders a different regime of truth in the Global South and determines its epistemic and emotional predisposition to all kinds of Russian propaganda and pro-Russian arguments.
'The situation', as the French scholar Jean-Sylvestre Mongrenier observed (in an article on South Africa but with far broader implications for the entire Global South), 'is "pre-formed": existing frameworks and historical legacies define the scope of possibilities and influence policy and strategy formulation.'
Changes are very unlikely in a foreseeable future, since Western policies remain incoherent, mutual trust is low, and experts’ policy recommendations strikingly lack specificity, resembling a list of good wishes rather than practical steps. The recommendations most often made are: to treat southern states 'as new sovereign subjects of world history rather than as objects to be dragooned onto the right side of history'; to avoid 'finger wagging and lecturing'; to 'engage with leaders and societal actors as equal partners', and to 'focus on areas of common interests'. All this 'is of course easier said than done', as one of the experts ultimately summed up his own proposals.
Defend territorial integrity
There are two important points, however, in these recommendations that Ukrainians should consider. First, to refrain from framing their struggle too forcefully as a crusade of global democracies against global autocracies. Such a slogan is not appealing to the autocratic majority in the Global South, nor is it attractive for the democratic minority which feels no inferiority vis-à-vis allegedly more ‘mature’ Western democracies (e.g., India) and certainly is not very content with their leadership.
It would be more reasonable to frame Ukraine’s anti-colonial struggle as a defense of national dignity, identity and sovereignty.
And secondly, in its communication with the Global South, Ukraine should emphasize 'the importance of defending the territorial integrity norm as a fundamental principle of international order'. In a region where many borders were drawn arbitrarily by colonizers’ whim, the argument of ‘norm protection’ might be more successful than calls to contain Russia, which is far away and is not perceived as an immediate threat in the Global South.
Ukraine’s advance in the region is an uphill battle that does not promise fast and easy success. Both political and cultural legacies of the colonial past and neocolonial pathologies of today’s ‘world-economy’ and Western-managed globalization work against Ukraine in the Global South. So far, its footprints in the region, especially in Africa, are negligible. Ukraine still lacks the resources and skilled professionals to advance its interests in the South, let alone compete there with the formidable Russian diplomatic and propagandistic machine. But to succeed in any endeavor, one should start. It might be too late for Ukrainians, but better late than never.
Mykola Riabchuk is a principal research fellow in the Institute of Political Studies in Kyiv and, currently, a visiting researcher in the Deutsches Historisches Institut in Warsaw.