Ahead of the so-called peace conference that is to be held in Switzerland— again, without the Russians present—Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has reduced his so-called peace formula from ten points to only three, on the fear that the conference may end in failure, according to Ukraine’s Delovaya Stolitsa newspaper. In an earlier interview with Reuters, Zelenskyy had said he planned to focus, during the conference, on food and nuclear security, as well as on humanitarian issues such as prisoner swaps. As such, he would omit some of the crazier elements (e.g., Russia hands over Crimea) in order to salvage some agreement on the more digestible items.
According to Reuters, while Zelenskyy was planning again to put forward his non-starter peace formula during the summit, organizers decided that all participants should be given an opportunity to introduce changes into the final document. This was done to attract leaders of the Global South, whose absence will make the summit useless.
The conference is expected to be held on June 15-16. The Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs has invited more than 160 delegations to it—just not the other participant in the conflict, Russia.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ruled out participation, and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said such a conference is a “road leading nowhere.”
