With Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Riyadh this week, diplomatic efforts to end the conflict in Ukraine entered a new stage.

The two sides, however, are not meeting in person. Instead, in an effort to mediate a cease-fire and lay the foundations for long-term peace, U.S. negotiators are using so-called shuttle diplomacy, by holding separate meetings with both Russia and Ukraine.

It is strategy that, diplomats say, is remarkably similar to the negotiations that brought the Bosnian War to a close 30 years ago.

TheDayton peace accords, finalized in November 1995 at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, were the result of frantic US shuttle diplomacy with the Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian leaders.

How Shuttle Diplomacy Worked

The meetings in the Saudi capital on March 23-25 to end the war, which is now in its fourth year, somewhat resemble the events around Dayton, says Christopher Hill, the former US ambassador to Serbia and North Macedonia.

As the deputy to Richard Holbrooke, the chief US negotiator and "architect" of the Dayton accords, Hill was closely involved in the peace process.

"We found that when they got together, they would just give speeches about their disagreements and why they are right and the other side is wrong. So we found shuttle diplomacy a much more effective tool," Hill explains.

Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic (left), Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic (center), and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman (right) initial the peace agreement after 21 days of talks at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, on November 21, 1995.

In the effort to achieve peace, US diplomats conducted meetings in Belgrade, Zagreb, and Sarajevo, as well as in Geneva. The goal, Hill says, was to get a real sense of what each side were looking for and then try to narrow it down. And then, finally, toward the end of [the] Dayton [process], we started to get [them] together in the same room, Hill recalls.

This method, Hill says, was used numerous times by Henry Kissinger, the US secretary of state under President Richard Nixon, as well as by Middle East negotiators. But I think it was rather successful with Bosnia, he adds.

Christopher Hill (file photo)

The Dayton accords were finally signed in Paris on December 14, 1995, and marked the end of a conflict that left 100,000 people dead, 2 million displaced, and the young country of Bosnia in ruins.

Mate Granic, who was the deputy chief negotiator for Croatian President Franjo Tudjman during the time of Dayton, says shuttle diplomacy is useful when the various positions are far apart.

"Ukraine seeks a just peace, while Russia has made it clear that it does not even want to discuss the occupied territories. Moscow also refuses to allow NATO peacekeeping forces or further military aid to Ukraine," Granic says. "Given this, shuttle diplomacy is the logical starting point."

A participant in the Dayton process, Nebojsa Vujovic, a member of the delegation led by Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, says the current US tactics with Ukraine and Russia could possibly bring them closer together -- just as Richard Holbrooke managed in the 1990s.

Photo Gallery:

The Bosnian War: From Death And Destruction To Dayton

• Lucie Steinzova

It was the bloodiest conflict Europe had witnessed since World War II. Between 1992 and 1995, almost 100,000 people were killed in the Bosnian War, which erupted after the collapse of Yugoslavia. The bloodshed finally ended when the warring parties agreed to the landmark Dayton peace agreement, on November 21, 1995. Twenty years later, these are some of the haunting images of the conflict and the struggle for peace.

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"The fact that [US President Donald] Trump and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin are speaking by phone, as well as Trump and [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskyy, while the US envoy visits Kyiv and Moscow and reports back to Trump, means that shuttle diplomacy is currently bringing things to a point where an initial cease-fire agreement might emerge," says Vujovic.

After the conclusion of the Saudi talks last week, the United States announced separate agreements with Russia and Ukraine on efforts to stop strikes on energy facilities in both countries and on prohibiting the use of force in the Black Sea.

Lessons From Dayton

Holbrooke once called Dayton an "imperfect peace." The agreement created two entities -- Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina -- three constituent peoples, one district, 10 cantons, and a three-member presidency. Despite attempts in 2006 and 2009 to amend the Dayton accords -- an annex to which serves as the countrys constitution -- no substantial changes have been implemented.

Reflecting on the Dayton process three decades later and what lessons could be learned for future negotiations, including those between Ukraine and Russia, Hill emphasizes that continued engagement is important.

"I think that's going to be necessary. You can't just say, 'Well, that problem's over. We'll go on to the next one,'" Hill says.

Could there, in the future, be a meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy? Hill thinks that's unlikely.

"I think Putin has assured [us] that there will be enmity between Ukraine and Russia for many generations," Hill says. "And so I would not try to put them together [so] that somehow they will feel that they are brothers or something, because that's not going to happen."