April 12, Pozirk. Alaksandar Łukašenka has criticized the Ukrainian president’s proposal for holding a peace summit in Switzerland without Russia.
“Our position is that they can only agree there how to escalate this conflict,” he said yesterday at his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
“What kind of peace process can be there without Russia? There can be no peace process,” he added.
“What can we discuss with them if they try to gather more than one hundred nations there and dictate something to us or bend us over? This is not a proposal for peace talks,” the Belarusian leader’s press office quoted him as saying.
He said he supported Russia’s position on peace settlement.
“That is why the Ukrainians, especially the population, should know that this does not depend on us. The ball is in [their] court, to put it bluntly,” Łukašenka said.
He repeated the Russian propaganda narrative that the West prohibited Kyiv from continuing talks with Russia at the start of the war, telling it to “fight until the last Ukrainian.”
He also told Putin he was ready to play a role in possible peace talks and “act in a coherent manner” with him.
Switzerland agreed in January to host the global peace summit on June 15 and 16. Russia has not been invited, but Switzerland expressed hope that it will join talks on peaceful settlement in the future.
Similar conferences were held in Denmark, Saudi Arabia and Malta in 2023 and Davos in 2024.
