Putin criticizes peace summit in Switzerland
Published: Friday, May 17th 2024, 15:30
Zurück zu Live Feed
Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin has criticized the Ukraine peace summit planned in Switzerland as a means of putting pressure on Russia. The conference planned for June 15 and 16 near Lucerne is an attempt to impose conditions on Russia to end the conflict.
Putin said this on Friday at the end of his two-day trip to China in the city of Harbin. Prior to this, he had also spoken with China's party and state leader Xi Jinping about his war of aggression against Ukraine. He did not give details of the conversation. Ukraine and the West hope that China will send a representative to the summit in Switzerland in order to lend more weight to the meeting.
Putin criticized the fact that Russia was constantly being reproached, but Moscow was not even invited to the meeting. Even Russia's allies do not see much point in the meeting unless both warring parties take part.
Putin once again emphasized that Russia was ready for negotiations. He once again recalled that an agreement had been reached with the Ukrainian side in Istanbul shortly after the start of the war to settle the conflict. There was a finished document that could continue to serve as a basis, Putin said. The newspaper "Welt" also quoted from the document at the end of April under the title: "The secret document that could have ended the war in Ukraine."
According to Putin, Kiev had decided at the time to continue the fight. The former Ukrainian chief negotiator and parliamentary group leader of the presidential party, David Arachamija, had confirmed that Moscow had only insisted on the neutrality of the neighboring country during the talks in order to end the conflict. "When we returned from Istanbul, (UK Prime Minister) Boris Johnson came to Kiev and said that we won't sign anything with them (the Russians) - let's just fight," Arachamija said in an interview on TV channel "1+1".
However, a meeting between President Volodymyr Zelensky and Putin would have been necessary for an agreement to be signed. In addition, Kiev had hesitated because there were no security guarantees in the event of a peace agreement being signed, said Arachamija. For Ukraine to achieve neutral status, the country's constitution would also have to be amended and the NATO course removed from it. In addition, the provisional agreement still included final regulations for possible territorial cessions of Ukraine demanded by Russia.
©Keystone/SDA
German 
English 
French 
Spanish 
Arabic