World leaders back just peace for Ukraine
‘Russia can start negotiations with us even tomorrow without waiting for anything — if they leave our legal territories’
Daily Tribune‘Russia can start negotiations with us even tomorrow without waiting for anything — if they leave our legal territories’
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, center, looks at papers as he attends a plenary session at the Summit on peace in Ukraine, at the luxury Burgenstock resort, near Lucerne, June 16.
AFP-Yonhap
Burgenstock, Switzerland (AFP) — World leaders on Sunday backed Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity, and the need for eventual talks with Russia on ending the war — but left the key questions of how and when unresolved.
More than two years after Russia invaded, leaders and top officials from more than 90 states spent the weekend at a Swiss mountainside resort for a two-day summit dedicated to resolving the largest European conflict since World War II.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hailed the diplomatic “success” of the event, to which Russia was not invited. The path was open for a second peace summit, with a view to ending the war with a just and lasting settlement, he added.
“Russia and their leadership are not ready for a just peace,” Zelensky told the closing news conference.
“Russia can start negotiations with us even tomorrow without waiting for anything — if they leave our legal territories.”
Moscow, meanwhile, doubled down on its demand for Kyiv’s effective surrender as a starting point for negotiations.
“Reaching peace requires the involvement of and dialogue between all parties,” said the summit’s final communique, backed by the vast majority of countries that attended the gathering at the Burgenstock complex overlooking Lake Lucerne.
The document also reaffirmed a commitment to the “sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all states, including Ukraine, within their internationally recognized borders.”
Any threat or use of nuclear weapons in the war was “inadmissible,” and food security “must not be weaponized,” it added.
The declaration also urged a full exchange of prisoners of war and the return to Ukraine of “all deported and unlawfully displaced children,” and other unlawfully detained Ukrainian civilians.
But not all attendees backed the joint communique. India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were among those who did not appear on a list of states endorsing it.
Pavan Kapoor, the head of India’s delegation to the summit, said New Delhi continued to believe that peace “requires bringing together all stakeholders and a sincere and practical engagement between the two parties to the conflict.”
