THE FLEET OF HELICOPTERS BEGAN TO ARRIVE at the Swiss resort around noon on June 15, shuttling world leaders toward the top of a mountain range speckled with grazing cows and wildflowers. The event had been sold to them as a global peace summit, the start of a process that would end the Russian war against Ukraine. But Russia and its allies, notably China, would not be represented. Instead, the Ukrainians would run the show, with President Volodymyr Zelensky in the starring role and his chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, the impresario.
Zelensky and Yermak, old friends from their early careers in the entertainment business, have been inseparable since Russia launched its invasion in early 2022. For much of that year, they lived together in a bunker beneath the presidential compound in Kyiv, slept down the hall from each other, shared meals in the bunker's cafeteria, and lifted weights in its makeshift gym. They appeared side by side during trips to the front and meetings with foreign allies. That fall, when Zelensky launched a peace process to end the war, he put his chief of staff in charge of it.
Ever since, Yermak has tried to build the groundwork for a peace on Ukraine's terms, racing to outwit Russia on the diplomatic front even as his country's armed forces lost ground in the war. With his willful and often overbearing nature, he has succeeded in critical ways while failing in others. Ukraine, through his efforts, has managed to set the stage for talks, gathered a large group of allies around it, and avoided getting dragged into a peace process that Russia controls.
The summit that took place in mid-June at the Bürgenstock, an Alpine resort where the likes of Sophia Loren and Audrey Hepburn once spent their holidays, was the first real test of this strategy. More than 80 countries agreed to attend, representing every region of the world, but with a distinct preponderance of Western democracies.
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