‘Pointless’ for Swiss to host Ukraine peace summit, says Russia
By showing solidarity with Ukraine, Switzerland had "lost its role as an impartial international mediator", said Sergei Garmonin.
Keystone / Peter Schneider
Switzerland hosting peace talks on Ukraine would be "pointless", Russia's ambassador in Bern said in an interview published on Sunday.
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Москва не видит смысла в мирном саммите по Украине в Швейцарии
At the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, Ukraine’s President, Volodymr Zelensky, asked Switzerland to organise a peace summit.
Neutral Switzerland has acted as a broker to resolve international conflicts in the past. Russian ambassador Sergei Garmonin, however, told the newspaper SonntagsZeitung that a Ukraine peace summit without Moscow’s participation would be “doomed to fail”.
Garmonin criticized Switzerland, saying the country consistently supported the “anti-Russian line of the collective West,” and by showing solidarity with Ukraine it had “lost its role as an impartial international mediator.” Swiss mediation is therefore “out of the question”, he said.
Zelenskiy’s ten-point peace plan was not a basis for entering into dialogue because it contained a series of ultimatums against Russia, Garmonin said. “You can’t talk to Russia in the language of ultimatums,” he said.
He said Russian demands to be taken into account included that “Ukraine must become a neutral, non-aligned country without nuclear weapons that respects the human rights and freedoms of all citizens and national groups on its territory.”
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