What Zelensky needs to make happen in Saudi Arabia

President Volodymyr Zelensky needs all the advice he can get, as he prepares for talks with American negotiators in Saudi Arabia tomorrow.

A statement over the weekend from the Ukrainian presidential office disclosed that the latest western visitor to make the long train ride into Kyiv was Jonathan Powell, Sir Keir Starmer’s national security advisor and veteran crisis negotiator.

The meeting between Powell and Andriy Yermak, the head of Zelensky’s office, provided further evidence that the UK is currently attempting to play an influential role in moderating what might seem, at present, to be a one-sided effort by the US to bludgeon the Ukrainian president into signing a deal to end the war with Russia.

The selection of Powell to whisper diplomatic words into the ear of Zelensky’s top official is notable. When he was appointed national security adviser, the focus was inevitably on his past function as Tony Blair’s longstanding chief of staff.

However, more interesting was Powell’s extraordinary experience as a primary negotiator in the Good Friday Agreement talks with the Provisional IRA, and from 2011 in a private capacity as founder of an international conflict-resolution organization called Inter Mediate.

His organization became involved in secret, back-channel negotiations with other terrorist groups around the world, including the Spanish group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna, which helped to end the 50-year campaign of violence by the Basque separatists in Spain.

Powell has a good pedigree for finding the right formula of words and action to resolve seemingly indestructible barriers. And it’s that sort of diplomacy which is now desperately needed to bring Ukraine and the US closer together to end the three-year war launched by Russia in a way which will not be judged as an outright victory for President Putin. Starmer has taken on this mediating role in the belief that the UK has a unique opportunity to join France in guiding Kyiv towards an acceptable deal, first with the US and then with Russia.

Trump wants to end the war and seems convinced his past and present personal relationship with Putin will make it happen. Zelensky, in that sense, is just a bit-part actor given a very brief and unchangeable script to follow.

This is where the UK government, and its representative, Jonathan Powell in Kyiv over the weekend, have stepped in. Powell will, unquestionably, have advised Kyiv to adopt the sort of language during the talks with the Americans in Riyadh which will somehow bridge the gap between Trump’s demands and threats, and Zelensky’s plea for a fair and just settlement which will guarantee Ukraine’s future as an independent sovereign nation.

Shocked by the eruption of anger from Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance at the infamous White House meeting on February 28, Zelensky made it worse by casting doubt on what the US diplomatic efforts with Moscow would achieve for Ukraine.

Ever since, the Starmer government, and President Emmanuel Macron of France, have tried to ensure Europe has a voice and that it will be heard and respected in the White House. There are now 20 European countries offering some form of help, if not troops, to boost Starmer’s coalition of the willing to set up a peacekeeping force in Ukraine in the event of a war-ending deal.

Moscow has rejected the idea, but it’s effectively on the table for discussion and could be raised in the Riyadh talks tomorrow. Zelensky is in Riyadh today for a state visit with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman but will leave the negotiating tomorrow to his chief of staff Andriy Yermak, foreign minister Andriy Sybiha and defense minister Rustem Umerov.

It has been a difficult transition for Zelensky. For nearly three years he had President Joe Biden and every European leader pledging military, financial and humanitarian support against the Russians for as long as it took.

This was the mantra ringing in his ears every time he met with his American and European partners, although towards the end of Biden’s administration, a degree of reality was introduced. The Biden White House acknowledged that only diplomacy would end the war and that the objective of the western coalition was to make sure that Kyiv was in the strongest possible position on the battlefield to give Zelensky leverage over Putin.

Trump has thrown that policy formula out of the window. Now, it’s peace at all costs and the quicker the better. He also says Putin has all the cards. So, not much room for Ukrainian leverage, as far as Trump is concerned.

With the weekend advice from Powell in his head, Andriy Yermak, chief Ukrainian negotiator, will sit down with the American delegation headed by Marco Rubio, secretary of state, and will have to find the right balance between demonstrating Kyiv’s unquestioned enthusiasm for peace while underlining the suffering caused by Russia’s brutal invasion and the need for some form of security framework for the post-war future. No angry words this time.

Here are the words of Jonathan Powell in December 2014 in an interview with the University of Liverpool after the publication of his book, Talking to Terrorists: How to End Armed Conflicts: “Getting people to talk to each other makes the biggest difference and so I’ve decided to spend the rest of my life doing it.”

Today, with a US president who seems more interested in talking at rather than talking to people, the UK may have found its natural role as mediator.