MINSK, July 8. /TASS/. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko supports Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s proposal to organize an international meeting of leaders of Ukraine, Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and France in Minsk, the Belarusian leader’s press service said in a statement issued on Monday.
"Our President is fully supporting the proposal [put forward] by Vladimir Zelensky. This position is unchanged and means that we should not look at each other through the barrel of guns, we need to sit down and resolve the issues which there are quite a few," the statement reads.
Speaking about the proposed participants of the meeting, the press service recalled that Lukashenko had earlier noted the need to settle the Ukrainian issue in a three-party framework, namely Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. "But since we cannot sort out the issue this way, and a party to the conflict — Ukraine in this case — is insisting and proposing that other players take part, we support this too. Even more so, since Alexander Lukashenko was already mentioning the US in the context of straightening out the conflict. It will be difficult to resolve this issue without the Americans, they are too immersed in these processes," the press service stated.
Speaking about the possibility of such a meeting, Minsk underlined that "there can’t be two opinions here." "The war is at our doorstep and Minsk has always considered and still considers it an honor to be a platform for peaceful initiatives and talks," the statement concludes.
Earlier on Monday, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky addressed Russian President Vladimir Putin with an initiative to hold a meeting in Minsk as mediated by the US, the UK, Germany and France. According to Zelensky, "we need to discuss who Crimea belongs to and who is not present in Donbass." Zelensky said he would like to see US President Donald Trump, UK Prime Minister Theresa May, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron as "the company for talks."