Russia will not participate in this year’s upcoming peace summit organized by Ukraine and its Western allies, the first of its kind where Kremlin representatives are set to be invited.
The Russian foreign ministry said any talks based on President Zelensky’s ‘Peace Formula,’ which includes restoring Ukraine’s full territorial integrity, amounts to “fraud” and not worth pursuing.
“This process itself has nothing to do with a settlement,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova said on an official Telegram page on Saturday, September 21st. “It is another manifestation of fraud by the Anglo-Saxons and their Ukrainian puppets.”
The next Ukraine Peace Summit is intended to be a follow-up to the previous, Swiss-organized meeting in June, which was attended by representatives of over 90 countries—but not Russia. Moscow’s lack of invitation was protested by several major delegations, with India refusing to sign the final resolution and China boycotting the event altogether.
The next summit has no official date or location yet. Kyiv previously stated that it wishes to hold it somewhere in the Middle East before the end of the year, hoping it would open the door for an almost immediate ceasefire agreement that would serve as the basis for further negotiations.
But as long as Zelensky insists on regaining the lost territories in eastern and southern Ukraine, Russia refuses to participate. Zakharova said Moscow was ready to discuss only “truly serious proposals” that take account of the “situation on the ground,” referring to the four regions annexed by Russia since 2022, even though none of them are fully occupied to this day.
Russia has been criticizing Kyiv for refusing to engage in peace talks for two years, only to do the same as soon as Ukraine became ready to extend an invitation after its successful invasion and occupation of parts of the Russian Kursk region. President Putin stated that there could be no talks while Ukrainian troops are still in Russia, but it’s unrealistic to expect Zelensky to give up his primary bargaining chip—and even hypocritical when the main issue is territorial integrity.
President Zelensky’s Peace Formula contains ten points in total, including the withdrawal of all Russian troops, reaffirming Ukraine’s post-soviet borders (including Crimea), and devising an international mechanism to bring the Kremlin to account for the invasion.
