Home › Security › After Bürgenstock: what the Swiss summit left open
After Bürgenstock: what the Swiss summit left open
Summary
A look back at the days around 18 June 2024, when a two-day peace summit had just closed while fighting and aid announcements continued.
What did the Bürgenstock summit actually settle, and what remained unresolved as of 18 June 2024? The two-day Global Peace Summit, dedicated to discussion of Ukraine's Peace Formula, had ended on 16 June at the Bürgenstock Resort in Switzerland.
A gathering without Russia
The summit, formally called the Summit on Peace in Ukraine, was held on 15–16 June 2024 and hosted by the Swiss president, Viola Amherd. Representatives from 92 nations and 8 international organisations attended. Russia did not participate. It followed a series of four earlier international meetings. The Peace Formula itself is an initiative and diplomatic platform that Ukraine proposed to the world community to achieve a just conclusion to the war.
The absence of Russia defined the shape of the event: it was a forum for Ukraine and its partners to discuss the formula, not a negotiation between the warring sides.
The war did not pause
On the battlefield, the picture on 16 June was unchanged by diplomacy. Russia claimed that day that it had captured the village of Zahirne in Zaporizhzhia Oblast.
Practical support also continued alongside the diplomacy. On 16 June, Norway announced 1.1 billion kroner (US$103 million) to help Ukraine repair its energy infrastructure and secure its electricity supply before the winter. The pledge pointed to a concern that the summit's diplomatic agenda did not address directly: keeping power running through the cold months.
Life in Kyiv continued
On the same day the summit closed, hundreds of LGBTQ+ Ukrainian Armed Forces troops and supporters marched in central Kyiv. They demanded legal reforms for more same-sex partnership rights. They did so despite opposition from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and from counter-protesters. The march showed that debates about rights and legal change were continuing in the capital even as the country was at war.
Reading the moment
Taken together, the events of 15–16 June show three parallel tracks. Diplomacy sought broad international backing for Ukraine's proposals, with dozens of states in the room but Russia outside it. The military track continued, with Moscow announcing further territorial claims. And a quieter track of material and civic activity, from energy repair funding to public demands for legal reform, went on regardless.
What the summit did not do, on the evidence of those days, was alter the immediate course of the fighting. Its significance lay in the attendance it gathered and the framework it advanced, while the questions of battlefield control and winter energy security stayed as pressing on 18 June as they had been before the delegates arrived.
