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Jokowi’s Russian mission is great, though it achieves little
After his courageous trip to Ukraine and Russia, President Jokowi should immediately build a solid and strong team to follow up on his peace initiative.
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Side by side: President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo (left) and Russian President Vladimir Putin head to a joint press conference at Kremlin in Moscow on June 30.
(Presidential Secretariat Press Bureau/Laily Rachev)
A highly respected Indonesian veteran diplomat concluded that President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo had failed his peace mission in Moscow last week. The influential and popular diplomat had given the President a 10-point recommendation just before the latter left for Kyiv and Moscow.
On the surface, the President’s shuttle diplomacy did not offer a breakthrough, let alone progress, in the efforts to end the Russia-Ukraine war because the problem is too complicated to overcome by an individual in a short time. But I believe Jokowi will pursue peace no matter what.
In his Twitter account, the founder of and chairman of the Foreign Policy Community of Indonesia (FPCI), Dino Patti Djalal, expressed his disappointment with Jokowi’s failure to get a meaningful concession from Russian President Vladimir Putin when they met on Thursday. The former deputy foreign minister concluded that Putin had totally ignored Jokowi’s peace mission because Russia was bombarding Ukraine when Jokowi arrived in Moscow.
On the same day, the Asian Wall Street Journal, in its report “Indonesia’s Jokowi Visit Ukraine and Russia, Warning Food Crisis Looms”, quoted Ian Storey, a senior fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak research institute in Singapore, as praising Jokowi’s initiative to play a mediating role in the war in Ukraine.
“It looks good for Indonesia playing a role on the world stage even if it doesn’t achieve anything,” said Storey.
I do agree with his view. Indonesia is too big and too important to just focus on its own domestic agenda or to limit itself as the anchor of the 10-member ASEAN. With all due respect, Indonesia is too important to devote itself to the regional grouping or become a defender of the ruthless Myanmar junta just for the sake of ASEAN’s unity.
Indonesia's public opinion tends to highly praise Jokowi’s courage to go to warn-torn Ukraine and softly approach Putin to ease the sea blockade of Ukraine without criticizing his invasion of a sovereign nation. Some of Jokowi’s die-hard supporters even proposed the absurd idea of proposing the President as this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner.
