Russian Foreign Ministry rules out attending proposed second Ukraine peace summit

Russia will not participate in a planned second peace summit reportedly being proposed by Ukraine, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin told state-owned news agency RIA Novosti on Thursday.

Galuzin criticised the rhetoric surrounding the event and said its organisers were unwilling to contemplate “other initiatives to resolve the Ukrainian crisis”.

“We are aware that the Kyiv regime and its Western allies intend to make up for the failed peace summit in Switzerland in mid-June … and hold another similar event,” Galuzin said.

He said Russia would not accept what he called “the ultimatums” set out in the peace formula put forward by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and noted that while no location had yet been chosen for the summit, “geography doesn’t matter, whereas content does”.

Ukraine is hoping to organise a second peace summit ahead of the US presidential election in November, to which it plans to invite Russia, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday.

The two-day Summit on Peace in Ukraine held near the Swiss city of Lucerne in June was seen as a partial success, though neither Russia nor China attended and 12 of the 92 countries present, including Russia’s BRICS partners in attendance, chose not to sign the final communiqué.

On the eve of the summit, Vladimir Putin listed his own preconditions for peace at a briefing with senior Russian Foreign Ministry officials, stipulating that Ukraine agree to be neutral, non-aligned, non-nuclear, demilitarised and “denazified”. Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior Zelensky advisor, called the proposals “a complete sham” and “offensive to common sense”.