Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has pushed Joe Biden to attend the next Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland, claiming that only Vladimir Putin will “applaud” him if he does not attend.
Despite the Biden administration’s strong support for Kyiv, sources indicate that President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris may miss the meeting, a significant setback for Mr. Zelensky, even if they plan to attend in Washington.
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The move has aroused concerns about Mr. Biden’s shifting interests ahead of the US presidential race, when he will compete against former President Donald Trump.
The two-day summit in Switzerland on June 15 and 16 will draw more than 80 countries, but major global players like China and the United States have declined to attend, and Russia has not received an invitation.
The summit’s goal is to bring leaders of state and government together to map a course for “just and lasting peace” in Ukraine based on the principles of the UN Charter and Ukraine’s own ‘Formula for Peace’, which Mr. Zelensky outlined in November 2020.
“I’d like President Biden to be personally present.” I know America supports the summit, but we don’t know at what level,” Mr. Zelensky told a press conference in Brussels.
“I believe that is not a strong judgment, with all due respect to everyone in the United States.”They are really supportive of us, although the current scenario is pretty straightforward.
“I believe that President Biden is necessary for this peace summit, as are other leaders who appreciate the US response.”
Putin would only respond to [Biden’s] absence with a personal, standing applause.
Mr. Zelensky earlier urged Mr. Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping to attend the conference while visiting Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, over the weekend. The city is only thirty kilometers from the Russian border.
In recent weeks, nearby Russian military forces have ruthlessly bombed the city and its surroundings and launched attacks across the border between the two countries, capturing more than 65 square kilometers of land two years after Ukrainian troops drove them out during the initial invasion.
Russia has dismissed the Swiss summit as “pointless” and reaffirmed its demands that any peace talks recognize the “new territorial realities” in Ukraine, referring to the four regions that Putin illegally annexed in September 2022 but that his forces now only partially occupy, as well as the Crimean peninsula, which Moscow annexed to international outrage in 2014.
According to a diplomatic cable, Russia has also urged countries in Asia, Africa, and South America to boycott the summit. Putin, his foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, and other officials have met and called counterparts from dozens of countries in an apparent attempt to discourage participation.
Mr. Zelensky, who claimed Putin was “very scared” of the summit, believes the Swiss conference is critical and that any peace proposal in Ukraine would need Russian forces to withdraw from all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, to the post-Soviet Union borders established in 1991.
On Tuesday, he revealed that the United States and China had yet to indicate a desire to attend the summit, and that his team was also attempting to persuade Brazil to go.
India, a member of the Brics group, an international alliance comparable to the Group of Seven (G7) consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, has confirmed its attendance, giving the summit a boost.
However, South Africa will not attend. President Cyril Ramaphosa cited the forthcoming South African elections as his reason for not attending.
In March, the Chinese Ambassador to Switzerland stated that his government supported fostering peace negotiations and was considering participation.
However, China has lately stated that it favors a peace conference convened “at an appropriate time” with “equal participation of all parties and fair discussion of all options for peace.”
