Saudi Arabia has invited leading developing nations to meet in a bid to win their backing for Ukraine, as the US and other western powers seek to weaken global support for Moscow’s full-scale invasion.
Senior officials from China, Brazil, South Africa and India — Russia’s partners in the BRICS grouping — have been invited to attend two-day talks in Jeddah next weekend, alongside more than 30 other states, according to four people with knowledge of the meeting. Russia has not been invited.
The gathering, a successor to similar meetings in Copenhagen last month, will try to persuade countries from South America, Africa and south-east Asia to back Ukraine’s peace plan, which calls for an end to the war by reclaiming its territory currently occupied by Russian troops.