MOSCOW: The Kiev government had to cut the so-called peace formula, earlier put forward by Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky, from ten ...
MOSCOW: The Kiev government had to cut the so-called peace formula, earlier put forward by Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky, from ten points to three, fearing that the upcoming peace conference in Switzerland may end in failure, the country’s Delovaya Stolitsa media outlet reported.
In an earlier interview to Reuters, Zelensky said he planned to focus on food and nuclear security, as well as on humanitarian issues such as prisoner swaps, during the upcoming summit.
The publication says Kiev’s expectations of the event have become way less optimistic. Zelensky was planning to discuss nothing but his own peace formula during the summit, but organizers decided that all participants should be given an opportunity to introduce changes into the final document. This was done to attract leaders of the Global South, whose absence will make the summit useless.
Therefore, the article says, the Ukrainian government is facing two unfavorable developments: either Global South leaders will ignore the summit or it will result in a final document that will be of little use for Kiev. Therefore, a decision was made to reduce the formula to three areas that are less likely to stir controversies among the participants.
Conference in Switzerland
Switzerland plans to hold a conference on Ukraine in the Burgenstock area on June 15-16. The Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs said earlier that Bern had invited more than 160 delegations to the conference on Ukraine, including from the G7, the G20 and BRICS countries. According to Swiss officials, Russia has not been invited.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia will not ask to participate in the conference if it is not wanted there. According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, holding the conference in Switzerland is a "road leading nowhere" and Moscow does not see the West's desire to do business in a fair manner. At the same time, Russia has repeatedly stressed that Moscow has never refused to settle the conflict with Kiev through peace talks.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, speaking via videoconference on the G20 summit in mid-November 2022, presented a so-called ten-point peace plan that does not take into account Moscow's position. In particular, it calls for the complete withdrawal of Russian forces from the 1991 borders and the return of control over the "exclusive economic zone" in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov to Ukraine.
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