Ukraine has rejected a Russian ceasefire proposal that would require Kiev to hand over territory to Moscow and abandon its goal of joining NATO, and has slammed Russian President Vladimir Putin for trying to position himself as a peace advocate.
“It is absurd that Putin, who together with his accomplices planned, prepared and carried out the largest armed aggression in Europe since World War II, calls himself an emissary of peace and presents the option of undermining the foundations of the international legal order and the UN Charter in order to end the war he started,” the Ukrainian foreign ministry said. wrote in a statement.
“Russia’s plan is not peace, but the continuation of war, the occupation of Ukraine, the destruction of the Ukrainian people and further aggression in Europe,” the statement added.
“President Putin is not in a position to tell Ukraine what it has to do to bring about peace,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels.
Putin’s proposal comes on the eve of a world peace summit in Switzerland this weekend where countries are coming together to discuss a future peace plan for Ukraine. Switzerland is hosting 90 delegations, and international organizations such as the United Nations are due to participate. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently visited Asian countries to encourage participation.
Moscow was not invited and will not attend the summit. Ukraine does not want Russia to be at the meeting, and Switzerland agreed. But Switzerland has insisted that Russia must be involved at some point in the peace process.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in a statement to the Russian newspaper Izvestia: Said The Peace Summit would be meaningless without Russia’s attendance.
“By sending such a signal into the information space on the eve of the first World Peace Summit in Switzerland, President Putin is pursuing only one goal – to prevent leaders and countries from taking part in the summit. The fact that President Putin’s comments came just one day before the summit is proof of Russia’s fear of true peace,” the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
According to a Russian proposal, Ukraine must cede all of its territories in the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions in eastern and southern Ukraine, which Russia claimed in 2022 but which most countries reject as illegal.
Russia currently does not fully control these territories; it also annexed Crimea in 2014.
Russia About Controls Now in the third year of the conflict, Russia occupies a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, and Ukraine continues to insist there is no chance of peace until Russia completely withdraws from Ukrainian territory.
Putin’s proposal reflects growing confidence that Russia can impose conditions, given its gradual inroads into Ukraine in recent months. When announcing the peace proposal, Putin warned that rejecting it would worsen the military situation in Kiev.
“Today we are making another concrete and real peace proposal. If Kiev and Western capitals reject it as they have done in the past, then in the end the continuation of the bloodshed will be their political and moral responsibility, it’s their problem,” Putin said.
Putin’s comments came as the United States imposed further sanctions on Russia and announced a 10-year security pact with Ukraine. The United States also reached a deal with G7 allies to use interest on Russian assets frozen in the West to back a $50 billion loan to Kiev.
Congress passed the Ukraine aid bill in May after months of delays and warnings from Ukraine that the delays were making it harder for them to combat Russian aggression.
