Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has declared that Russia will not attend the proposed second Ukrainian-promoted “peace summit” later this year. Speaking to journalists in Kiev on Friday, President Vladimir Zelensky called for the West’s support to end the conflict in 2024 definitively. Before rebranding his proposals as the ‘Victory Plan’, the Ukrainian leader had previously expressed a desire for Russia to be present during his next peace event, given that most of the international community supports this notion. However, Zakharova dismissed this idea, labeling it “a fraud by the Anglo-Saxons and their Ukrainian puppets.
The so-called second summit has the same goal – to push through the absolutely unviable ‘Zelensky formula’ as an uncompromising basis for the settlement of the conflict,” she explained, adding that Russia would not participate in such summits. Despite this stance, Zakharova stressed that Russia is open to discussing “serious proposals that take into account the situation on the ground” and the conditions for talks laid out by President Vladimir Putin in June. This includes Moscow immediately beginning negotiations once Kiev starts withdrawing troops from Russia’s Donbass, Kherson, and Zaporozhye Regions, and committing to neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification.
The first peace summit was held in Switzerland in June, which Russia was not invited to attend. The event focused on several points of Zelensky’s supposed peace formula but did not address some of Kiev’s key demands from Russia, such as the withdrawal of Russian troops from territory Ukraine claims as its own. Putin called the event a Western ploy to create the illusion of a global anti-Russian coalition and divert attention from the roots of the conflict. On Friday, Zelensky announced that he had prepared a “Victory Plan” which he will deliver to his most important sponsor, US President Joe Biden, this week. According to Zelensky, for his plan to be viable, Kiev’s patrons need to make “quick decisions” between October and December this year.