The Secretary General of the Organization of United Nations (UN) Antonio Guterres will not attend the peace conference on Ukraine, which will be held on June 15-16 in Switzerland, his spokesman Stephane Dujarric announced. At the same time, he stressed that the UN “will be represented at an appropriate level” as an observer.
More than 160 countries are invited to the peace meeting. The leaders of several G-7 countries are expected to attend: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, Prime Ministers of Canada and Japan Justin Trudeau and Fumio Kishida. The United States will be represented by Vice President Kamala Harris.
But important countries of the “Global South” as China, Brazil, Mexico and Saudi Arabia decided to ignore the conference. Beijing has said it will only support those summits where both sides of the conflict will be represented.
Russia was not invited to the meeting. Switzerland explained this decision with the position of Moscow itself, which criticized the initiative and publicly stated in advance that it was not interested in participating. The organizers expressed hope that in the future Russia will change its attitude, since without it the peace process is impossible.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he would not like to see Russia at the first summit as it would “block everything”. According to him, it will be discussed at the next stage, when world leaders develop the basic principles of a peace agreement.
Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Kiev of intending to use the meeting to promote the “peace formula” of Zelensky. “The point of this event is clear: to bring together as many countries as possible, then announce that everything is agreed, and then present this to Russia as a settled matter, an ultimatum. There will be no such development of events," Putin warned.
At the same time, Zelensky said that only three points of his “peace formula” will be discussed at the summit: nuclear and food security, exchange of prisoners of war in the format of “all for all“ and return of Ukrainian children who were taken to Russia. Other provisions related to troop withdrawal and cessation of hostilities will not be affected for the time being. Putin ruled out the possibility of negotiations that would involve Russia giving up the occupied territories of Ukraine and demanded that the “realities on the ground“ be taken into account.