‘Pointless’ for Swiss to host Ukraine peace summit, says Russia
Switzerland hosting peace talks on Ukraine would be "pointless", Russia's ambassador in Bern said in an interview published on Sunday.
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”.
+ Ukraine peace summit could take place in 2024, says Swiss president
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.”
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
External Content
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Almost finished… We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.
More
Why Switzerland is among the ten fastest-warming countries in the world
More
In Switzerland four out of ten people have a migrant background – who are they?
More
Suicides in Switzerland quadruple among older people
More
French gangs target luxury cars in Switzerland
More
Renewed controversy in Switzerland over US fighter jets – explained
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.