Conflict and Peace

Senior United States official, the Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, has held talks with the military leaders of Niger following a coup last month. Speaking to reporters from capital Niamey, Nuland said that, in talks lasting more than two hours, the U.S. had offered its help "if there is a desire on the part of the people who are responsible for this to return to the constitutional order". The U.S. was not "in any way taken up on that offer", she said.

The Saudi Arabian port city of Jeddah is to host a global summit on reaching peace in Ukraine on Saturday (5 August). The summit will be attended by some 40 countries including many countries of the "Global South", as well as China. Russia was not invited to the talks, however, and Moscow has said that they will "monitor" the summit. The discussion and future implementation of Ukraine's Peace Formula, set out by President Volodymyr Zelensky during an address to the G20 in November, will be the subject of the summit in Jeddah.

The Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers meet in Moscow today at the invitation of their Russian counterpart. It is the latest attempt by Russia to ensure that it is not marginalized, as Armenia-Azerbaijan negotiations continue in earnest with western mediation. In this op-ed for commonspace.eu, Benyamin Poghosyan says that Russian demands to include in the peace agreement the issue of rights and security of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh may allow Armenia to take a more flexible position during the upcoming negotiations and seek to create minimally acceptable conditions for Armenians living in Nagorno Karabakh. 

On the night of Monday (24 July), Russia launched a wave of drone strikes on Ukrainian grain silos at the Danube river ports of Izmail and Reni, located only 200m from the Ukraine's border with NATO member state Romania. The airstrikes injured six people and damaged grain storage units. Ukraine's Southern Military Command said they shot down three drones out of a total of 15 launched at the facility.

On Saturday, 15 July, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan once again met in Brussels, under the auspices of the president of the European Council Charles Michel, to discuss the future of the relations between their two countries after years of war and conflict. Those who hoped for a dramatic breakthrough in the past in the process of Armenia - Azerbaijan normalisation, may have been disappointed at how slow the process moved. Yet progress is being made, and yesterday, speaking after the meeting in Brussels, European Council president Charles Michel summed it up, saying "We are going through one of the most comprehensive and vigorous stages of negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan". Those who still think that peace is a "moment" are mistaken. It is a process that needs to develop step by step. The meeting in Brussels this weekend was certainly a step in the right direction.