MOSCOW, June 4. /TASS/. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and his Western "friends" personally called all the leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and asked them to come to the so-called peace summit in Switzerland, but they all refused, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin said.
"Zelensky and his Western ‘friends’ personally called all leaders of the CIS countries in a last-ditch attempt to beg them to take part in this ‘get-together.’ We know that no one agreed to this," the senior diplomat said.
According to him, Russia’s closest friends and allies from the CIS are well aware of the essence of this conference. "It has nothing to do with peace," Galuzin pointed out. "It is a hasty attempt to create an anti-Russian coalition and to present Moscow with an ultimatum, to make it appear that the world supports Zelensky's unimplementable peace formula. Such ‘get-togethers’ do not contribute to a political settlement. Their holding is pointless and a priori doomed to failure," he emphasized.
"The so-called peace conference in Switzerland is nothing but a camouflaged continuation of the failed Copenhagen format to promote Zelensky's stalemate peace formula. During the meetings of this format in 2023 and 2024 in Jeddah, Valletta, and Davos, Kiev and its Western curators actively tried to lure representatives from the Global South and East to join them. Of course, they didn’t forget about our CIS partners. We know for sure that they regularly received invitations, which were ignored," the deputy foreign minister said.
Switzerland’s peace conference
Switzerland plans to hold a conference on Ukraine in the Burgenstock area on June 15-16. The Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs said earlier that Bern had invited more than 160 delegations to the conference on Ukraine, including from G7, G20 and BRICS countries. According to Swiss officials, Russia has not been invited.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia will not ask to participate in the conference if it is not wanted there. According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, holding the conference in Switzerland is a "road to nowhere" and Moscow does not see that the West wants to enter into fair negotiations. At the same time, Russia has repeatedly stressed that Moscow has never refused to settle the conflict with Kiev through peace talks.