Ukraine struggles to garner support for Swiss conference — Russian Foreign Ministry
"There are increasingly fewer people willing to discuss this subject with Kiev’s envoys, let alone going there," Rodion Miroshnik stressed
MOSCOW, April 16. /TASS/. Attempts by the Kiev regime to round up representatives of the global majority to the upcoming conference on Ukraine in Switzerland are misfiring and there are increasingly fewer people willing to discuss the subject, Rodion Miroshnik, the Russian Foreign Ministry's special envoy for the crimes of the Kiev regime, said.
"The Kiev regime’s attempts to force the global majority representatives to attend a 'peace summit' are failing. There are increasingly fewer people willing to discuss this subject with Kiev’s envoys, let alone going there," the diplomat wrote on his Telegram channel.
Meeting in Switzerland
On April 10, at a press conference in Bern, Swiss President Viola Amherd said that the country would host a conference on Ukraine this June. Top Swiss diplomat Ignazio Cassis said that Russia would not attend, however, admitting that "no peace process can take place without Russia." According to Switzerland’s RTS TV channel, the conference on Ukraine will be held June 15-16 at the Burgenstock resort near Lake Lucerne in central Switzerland. However, Swiss officials have not yet mentioned any specific dates.
Earlier, the Indian Express newspaper reported that India was officially invited to participate in a conference on the so-called Ukrainian peace formula in Switzerland in June and this subject came up during a phone conversation between the country’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. The issue was also raised during a visit by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba to New Delhi at the end of March. According to Bloomberg, India does not believe that the meeting in Switzerland will be able to get anything done without Russia’s participation.
Sideshow conference
On April 12, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that holding a conference on Ukraine in Switzerland is a "road to nowhere." According to him, Moscow does not see any desire on the part of the West to play fair. "Instead of direct dialogue without any ultimatums, the West is imposing the so-called Copenhagen process, planning a conference in Switzerland, where, it is explicitly stated, they want to formulate, finalize the infamous 10 points of [Ukrainian President Vladimir] ‘Zelensky's peace formula’ and then present it to Russia," the foreign minister said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko stressed that Russia had never rejected a peaceful solution on Ukraine while the Switzerland conference on settlement without Moscow was some kind of a "circus."