Ukraine Peace Summit
This June 15, 2024 kicks off the Ukraine Peace Summit, a gathering of 100 countries from around the world advocating an end to the war between Ukraine and Russia.
Nearly 100 countries and organizations will attend a major conference in Switzerland dedicated to establishing a path to peace between Ukraine and Russia, but there will be no delegation from Moscow.
The Ukraine Peace Summit, being held at a resort near Lucerne, will be attended by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who wants to rally support for the 10-point peace plan he first outlined in late 2022.
Most Western governments will be represented, some at a high level.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is attending the Ukraine Peace Summit and will announce an aid package of more than $1.5 billion to help Kyiv rebuild its battered infrastructure and address humanitarian needs stemming from the conflict, according to a White House statement released Saturday.
Joining the Ukraine Peace Summit are heads of state and government from several European states, including France, Germany and the United Kingdom, as well as Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
No China: Ukraine Peace Summit
However, China will not attend. He argued that any such meeting must be attended by both Russia and Ukraine.
Zelensky’s plan includes demands for a cessation of hostilities, restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukrainian soil, and restoration of Ukraine’s pre-war borders with Russia.
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It also calls for the establishment of a special tribunal to prosecute Russian war crimes.
Russia has expressed little interest in agreeing to those terms and has shown no signs of compromise on territorial issues.
On Friday, the day before the start of the Ukraine Peace Summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated the Kremlin’s peace plan, which Ukraine is unlikely to ever accept.
The proposal calls for Ukrainian troops to withdraw from four regions in southern and eastern Ukrainian territory that Moscow said it would annex in violation of international law and in turn for Kyiv to abandon its bid to join NATO.
While Russian forces have made modest gains in two of the regions – Donetsk and Luhansk – in recent months, they are far from occupying all four, which include Kherson and Zaporiyia.
Putin said later in the day that nearly 700,000 Russian troops are fighting in Ukraine, up from the 617,000 he reported during a year-end press conference in 2023.
Zelensky responded in an interview with Italian television that “the fact that Putin is asking us to give him part of our territories, occupied and unoccupied, he is talking about several regions of our country, implies that he will not stop (there), and there will not be a frozen conflict.”
