Switzerland to host peace summit without Russia
Switzerland said it would organise a high-level peace conference for Ukraine in mid-June, but without Russia, which promptly slammed the event as a US-orchestrated plot.
Ukraine and up to 100 countries would attend the conference at the luxury Burgenstock resort near the central city of Luzern on June 15-16, which Swiss President Viola Amherd said she would host.
“This is a first step in a process towards a lasting peace,” she told reporters in Bern.
Amherd said “we will not sign a peace plan at this conference” but “we hope to start the process”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called in his daily briefing on “every leader, every state that wanted the Russian aggression to end in a truly just peace [to] join our global efforts – the first peace summit to be held in Switzerland in June”.
Ukraine was helping prepare the conference with the aim of achieving “concrete results … a clear position of the world on a just end to the war”.
Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and whose forces are putting Ukraine under new pressure, meanwhile, immediately condemned the event as being part of a scheme by US
President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party ahead of this year’s presidential election.
“American Democrats, who need photos and videos of events that supposedly indicate their project ‘Ukraine’ is still afloat, are behind this,” the state-run Tass news agency quoted foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying.
Switzerland hopes to include Russia in later talks.
The Swiss government agreed during a January visit by Zelensky to organise a peace conference this year. It said on Wednesday that it now determined that “there is currently sufficient international support for a high-level conference to launch the peace process”.
In January, Zelensky spoke of a “summit” without any Russian participation.
Traditionally neutral Switzerland has from the start insisted Moscow must be brought into the talks, and has been battling to attract China and other emerging powers. Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis met his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in New York in January to try to woo him to the conference.
But Russia, angered by the Swiss decision to go along with sanctions imposed by the European Union, said the country could no longer be considered neutral.
“A peace process cannot happen without Russia, even though it will not be there during the first meeting,” Cassis said. “Peace cannot be achieved without all the parties to the conflict on board.”
While Russia would not be there, more than 100 other countries would be invited, with invites to go out “in coming days”.
Cassis said the United States had confirmed its participation and that China had sounded “positive” about the initiative.
The conference would aim to establish “a forum for a high-level dialogue on ways to achieve a comprehensive, just and lasting peace for Ukraine, in accordance with international law and the UN Charter”, the government said.
Also, the Swiss government has announced it will allocate 5 billion Swiss francs (HK$43 billion) to support Ukraine’s recovery through 2036. The World Bank has estimated the total cost of reconstruction facing Ukraine after more than two years of war is at least US$486 billion.