Switzerland’s decision to host a high level Summit on Peace in Ukraine has placed the country’s historic neutrality under a new kind of stress. The Federal Council has framed the Bürgenstock meeting as a starting point for a broader process rather than a venue for a direct Kyiv Moscow bargain. That framing is prudent. But it also exposes two competing pressures that Bern must manage simultaneously: the operational demands of running a major multilateral event and the longer term diplomatic cost of being perceived as anything but neutral by key external actors.

At the operational level the summit is an unusually complex exercise for a small state. Switzerland publicly invited some 160 delegations and, by mid May, roughly fifty states had confirmed participation. That scale is deliberate. Swiss planners want geographical depth and representation from the Global South so that any roadmap for a peace process can claim wider legitimacy. It is also necessary to show that the meeting is not simply a Western show of force. But inviting a broad cohort raises logistical and security burdens that go well beyond earlier Swiss hosting tasks. The resort site is compact and easy to secure. Still, closing airspace, managing convoys and creating secure communication channels for heads of state create operational burdens that are atypical for Swiss domestic institutions and that will test the interagency machinery.

The second, more consequential, challenge is reputational and legal. Since 2022 Switzerland has taken steps that many perceive as eroding the tidy separation between mediation and policy alignment. Bern voluntarily adopted a series of European Union linked restrictive measures against Russian actors following the 2022 invasion. For many observers that alignment was defensible as a response to a grave breach of international law. For others, including Moscow, it created a factual basis to claim that Switzerland no longer occupies the neutral centre ground necessary for classic mediation. Those criticisms matter because perceived impartiality is a currency in mediation. If a potential mediator is seen as a partisan actor by one of the main parties, that party may decline to engage or to recognise any forward process originating on the host’s territory.

Swiss diplomats understand this dynamic and have emphasised that Russia is not being excluded for eternity; rather Russia was not expected to join the first, convening session and must be brought into any durable process. That is a defensible sequence in theory. In practice the absence or reluctance of major external stakeholders complicates the summit’s aim of creating a broadly accepted roadmap. China, for example, has been promoting an alternative set of principles together with Brazil, arguing that any conference must be held at a time recognised by both Russia and Ukraine and that all parties must be able to participate on an equal footing. The Brazil China statement of May 23 set out a six point “common understanding” that highlights inclusivity and an insistence against bloc polarisation. For Switzerland this competing initiative highlights a structural problem: convening a widely accepted process requires buy in from actors whose strategic interests cut across the assumptions embedded in Kyiv’s own maximalist political demands.

What does this mean for Switzerland’s longer term mediation role? First, Bern must be explicit about the limited and sequenced nature of the Bürgenstock meeting. Presenting the event as a convening to identify confidence building measures and working topics rather than as a final peace negotiation reduces the risk of charges that it is a partisan exercise. Second, Switzerland should focus on technical, low threshold deliverables where cross regional consensus is plausible. Nuclear safety for civilian installations, humanitarian channels for prisoners and deportees and steps to restore food export corridors are the sorts of concrete items that can build credibility without forcing early political concessions on territorial questions. These kinds of small, durable steps both help people on the ground and create the political capital needed to coerce or persuade reluctant powers to join a later political phase. The Swiss government has stressed similar themes in public planning documents.

Third, Bern must manage domestic politics and messaging. There is an important, domestic conversation underway in Switzerland about whether the country’s post 2022 posture represents an evolution of neutrality or a departure from it. That debate will shape Swiss domestic consent for future initiatives and could constrain Bern’s freedom of manoeuvre. If the federal government overstates Swiss impartiality in the face of demonstrable policy alignment with Western sanctions, it risks future credibility losses when adversaries point to those facts to justify non participation. A more candid articulation of Swiss interests and limits will serve mediation more than defensive restatements of historic neutrality.

Finally, Switzerland should use the summit to expand the technical architecture for follow up. A rotating set of working groups, co chaired by states from different regions and including relevant international organisations, would convert a one off event into a sustained process. That will require careful rules on participation, transparency and perhaps third party monitoring of any agreed confidence building measures. If Switzerland can shepherd the creation of such an architecture, the Bürgenstock meeting will be remembered not as a symbolic photo opportunity but as the practical first step of a scalable, inclusive process.

The summit presents a moment of risk and opportunity for Swiss diplomacy. The risk is that perceived bias or simple operational missteps will undercut Bern’s claim to be an honest broker. The opportunity is to demonstrate that a small, capable neutral can create durable platforms for incremental progress even in a conflict defined by ferocious strategic asymmetries. For that to happen Bern must choose clarity over theatricality, sequence over grand design and technical confidence building over immediate political settlement. If it does so, Switzerland’s reputation as a facilitator of practical steps toward peace may survive and even be strengthened. If it does not, the much older idea of Swiss neutrality will accelerate its transformation into something more instrumental and contested.