Moscow: Russia has said that a recent Swiss-hosted conference on the Ukraine war had produced "zero" results and highlighted the futility of holding talks without Moscow. A total of 93 states and international organizations participated in the weekend summit near Lucerne where Western powers and their allies denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine but failed to persuade major non-aligned states to join their final statement.
The final declaration noted that the Ukrainian nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhya, which is occupied by Russia, should be under Ukrainian control.
At a daily briefing with reporters, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was asked whether countries such as Hungary, Serbia and Turkey had taken part in the meeting and signed the statement would spoil Russia’s relations with them.
“No, it won’t spoil them. We will, of course, take into account the position that these countries have taken, this is important to us and we will continue to explain our reasoning to them,” Peskov said.
“Many of them, and this was a common point of view on this event, confirmed their understanding of the absence of prospects for any serious, substantive discussions without the presence of our country...If we talk about the overall effectiveness of this meeting, it is close to zero.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin presented his peace plan a day ahead of the summit, demanding that Ukraine surrender the territory held by Russian forces and withdraw its application to join NATO. Peskov said that Putin's peace proposals remained on the table for discussion.
Saudi, India, S Africa opt out of Ukraine declarationWhile Saudi Arabia, India, South Africa, Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico, and the United Arab Emirates participated in the summit, they stopped short of signing the Ukraine declaration. India said that it has decided to "avoid association with the joint communique or any other document" emerging from the two-day summit. Eighty countries and four European institutions signed the final joint communique. |
