Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday that Russia was still trying to disrupt next month’s world “peace summit” devoted to the conflict with Russia and was putting pressure on countries to stay away from the gathering.
Zelenskiy wants the summit, scheduled for 15th to 16th June in Switzerland, to produce a front to exert pressure on Russia and advance his “peace formula” – which calls for the withdrawal of Russian troops and the restoration of Ukraine’s 1991 borders.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy looks on, during a visit to meet with F-16 training instructors at Melsbroek air base, near Brussels, Belgium, on 28th May, 2024. PICTURE: Reuters/Piroschka van de Wouw/File photo
In his nightly video address, Zelenskiy said “nearly 100 countries and international organisations” were now associated with “global efforts” to resolve the conflict.
“Russia will no longer be able to disrupt the summit although it is trying very hard to do so,” Zelenskiy said.
“It is putting pressure on leaders, openly threatening various countries with destabilisation. And this is one of the consequences of the world giving the terrorist state too much time.”
He said officials from Ukraine’s government, parliament and other institutions were working to ensure maximum participation and make the summit “truly effective, which is needed to bring real peace closer”.
The summit’s Swiss hosts have not invited Russia and Moscow dismisses the event as pointless without its participation.
The Kremlin says it is prepared to negotiate on an end to the conflict and suggests as a starting point talks held in the war’s first weeks in 2022 which appeared to be close to an agreement, which Ukrainian negotiators then rejected.
Moscow dismisses Zelenskiy’s plan as unworkable and says any discussion must take into account “new realities”, including the fact that Russia holds about 18 per cent of Ukraine’s territory.
Russia annexed four Ukrainian regions several months after its full-scale invasion in February 2022, though it does not have full control over any of them.
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Meanwhile, search and recovery teams have identified 19 bodies at a hardware store hit by Russian bombs last weekend in the north-eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko said on Wednesday.
Klymenko said on the Telegram messaging app that recovery work was now complete. The dead in Saturday’s attack included two minors.
“This was not a simple matter,” Klymenko said. “The search for the dead was conducted round-the-clock in the ash with special equipment and they were promptly identified with the help of a DNA laboratory,” he said.
Dogs were deployed and residents submitted 16 requests to investigate the fate of missing relatives.
Russia made no comment on the incident, but says it does not target civilian sites in the more than two-year-old war.
Kharkiv, which withstood a Russian advance in the early weeks of the conflict, has been increasingly targeted by strikes in recent weeks. A missile attack on Saturday targeted a city centre district, with 25 people injured.
