On the eve of the summit, Switzerland confirmed that 100
delegations, including 57 heads of state and government from all regions of the
world, would attend.
Ukraine’s leading Western allies will be represented at a
high level. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron,
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, European Council President Charles
Michel, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Japanese Prime
Minister Fumio Kishida, as well as presidents and prime ministers of many other
countries will personally attend the summit in the Swiss resort of Bürgenstock
near Lake Lucerne (Vierwaldstätte). Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew will also
attend.
The United States will be represented by Vice President
Kamala Harris; Turkiye, Hungary, and Italy will be represented by their foreign
ministers. Argentine President Javier Milei changed his plans at the last
minute to come to Switzerland. Australia will be represented at the ministerial
level.
Russia was not invited to the summit, and China refused to
participate. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg criticized Beijing for
this position. Among the G20 member states, the delegations of Mexico and Saudi
Arabia will not attend the summit in Switzerland.
The day before the summit, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin
voiced his groundless “conditions” for the alleged end of the war against
Ukraine. Among them were Ukraine’s refusal to join NATO and the actual
abandonment of the territory of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhya
oblasts within their administrative borders. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry and
the President’s Office called Putin’s statements absurd and unacceptable from
the point of view of international law, while Volodymyr Zelenskyy described
them as ultimatums and compared them to the demands of Nazi Germany.
According to the sources, the draft final declaration calls
Russia the aggressor in the conflict.
The peace summit was not planned as a platform for direct
talks between Russia and Ukraine, but was intended to create an international
platform for moving closer to a just peace in Ukraine based on respect for the
principles of the UN Charter, EU Chief Diplomat Josep Borrell said shortly
before the event. He expressed hope that the summit would begin the process of ending
the war that Russia is waging against Ukraine.
For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
announced that the summit would discuss “the movement towards real peace” and a
step-by-step path to full restoration of security in Ukraine.
“We want to give diplomacy a chance and have gathered about
a hundred states for this purpose,” Zelenskyy said in a speech in the German
Bundestag a few days before the summit.
“Yes, we understand what kind of killers we have to fight
against today, and we will not forget that only weapons effectively stop them
and protect our lives. But we also remember that peace does not grow from
shots, but from guarantees – from reliable guarantees that there will be no
more shots and evil will no longer come to the land of the people who wanted to
destroy this evil.”
The summit is expected to focus on three points from Ukraine’s
10-point peace formula, which Zelenskyy presented in the fall of 2022. The
Ukrainian leader explained that those points were chosen because they “can
unite all the participants of the summit.”
- food security (should not be a weapon and should be guaranteed by free navigation in the Black and Azov Seas)
- nuclear safety (nuclear energy facilities must be safe, any threat of using nuclear weapons is unacceptable, and nuclear facilities such as Zaporizhzhya NPP must operate under the control of Ukraine and in accordance with the principles established by the IAEA)
- exchange of prisoners, including the return of deported children (all war prisoners must be released, including all deported and illegally displaced Ukrainian children and civilians who must be returned to Ukraine).
At the same time, according to Western media, the final
communique of the summit is not likely to contain demands for the withdrawal of
Russian troops and the restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
According to the Japanese broadcaster NHK, these points were
not included in the draft final communiqué “taking into account the positions
of some Asian and Middle Eastern countries that maintain ties with Russia.”
Instead, as Radio Liberty reported, citing a previous draft
of the final summit statement, the document may contain wording that “achieving
peace requires participation and dialogue between all parties.”
Bloomberg specified that the document would also aim to pave
the way for future negotiations between Kyiv and Moscow. In particular, the
following wording was tentatively included in the document: “We agreed to take
concrete steps that can serve as confidence-building measures in the above
areas, with further involvement of Russian representatives.”
However, this is only a draft communiqué, and the document
is still subject to change.
Extraordinary security measures will be taken in Switzerland during the summit due to the presence of numerous foreign leaders. The Swiss government has decided to close the skies over Bürgenstock, where the event will take place. This means that the country’s air force will enforce a no-fly zone in the region from 8 a.m. on June 13 to 8 p.m. on June 17. The Swiss Armed Forces will provide auxiliary security support on the ground.