Economy – Davos day 1: Zelensky seeks support for his peace plan and the Kremlin says that “it will achieve nothing”

First modification: 01/16/2024 – 06:20

A peace plan sponsored by Switzerland and that takes Russia out of the equation. On the first day of the Davos Forum, conversations focused on the strategy of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to seek an end to the war through the support of the allied countries that support him.

And, as Volodymyr Zelensky's security advisors commented, The number of countries seeking to help Ukraine in the war conflict is increasing, while the attacks do not stop and neither party wants to give ground.

According to Andriy Yermak, chief of staff of the Ukrainian president, almost half of Europe, 18 countries in Asia and 12 in Africa support the so-called Peace Formula.

“Countries of the Global South are becoming increasingly involved in our work. It shows the understanding that this European conflict is, in fact, a challenge for all humanity,” Yermak published in a statement.

Zelensky's 10-point proposal focuses, among other things, on expelling Russian forces from Ukrainian territory while seeking to hold Russia accountable before high international courts for war crimes. that have been pointed out. For Moscow, this proposal does not even enter the negotiation stage and has rejected it repeatedly.

In Ukraine's ideal document, which was discussed this Monday, January 15 in Switzerland, there was talk of a scenario in which Russia eventually withdraws and a panorama was drawn up in which “environmental security and justice” is returned to Ukraine. . There was even talk of how Ukrainians would celebrate the end of the war, which is about to enter its second year.

“For all Ukrainians, the most important thing is to win this war. A simple ceasefire would not put an end to the aggression and that is definitely not the path to peace. The Russians do not want peace. They want domination,” Yermak said

However, these talks have an exception that will have to be reviewed soon: Russia has not been invited to any of the meetings in which Ukraine's plan to end the war is discussed and, for this reason, Moscow has said that the proposal is “ biased”, and has assured that it will reject any initiative that is based on these ideas.

On the Ukrainian side, the Swiss meetings also seek to take advantage of agreements that were previously made with Denmark, Saudi Arabia and Malta in mid-2023 in closed-door talks, which, again, took Russia out of the equation.

Despite all this, the Ukrainian president and his Swiss counterpart, Viola Amherd, announced the so-called Global Peace Summit that Switzerland would organize and which is already underway to announce when and where it would take place.

“I confirmed that Switzerland is ready to host a conference. We have agreed that we will thoroughly examine the details of the next steps to ensure that the peace process is a success,” Amherd said.

“Global inequality continues to rise”: Oxfam

The international anti-poverty organization Oxfam, made up of 19 other NGOs, revealed that the world could have a new billionaire in the next 10 years.

According to the group, the fortunes of the world's five richest men have soared 114% in real terms since 2020, when the world was struggling with lockdowns due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Oxfam even assured that said billionaire may not be among the five richest men: the CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, Bernard Arnault and his family from the luxury company LVMH, the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos, the founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison, and investment guru Warren Buffett.

“We have the top five billionaires, they have doubled their wealth. On the other hand, almost 5 billion people have become poorer (…) Within a decade we will have a new billionaire, while to fight poverty we need more than 200 years,” said Amitabh Behar, acting executive director of Oxfam, who also assured that the trillion-dollar person would be worth the same as oil-rich Saudi Arabia.

With AP.