Russia rejects Ukraine peace summit

Russia rejects Ukraine peace summit

Russian officials have rejected a proposal by Ukraine’s Foreign Minister for a “peace summit” between the two-warring countries.

Russian President, Vladimir Putin, claimed he that wanted to end the current war. On Sunday, he repeated his claim that he was ready to “negotiate with everyone involved in this process about acceptable solutions,” Russia’s leading news agency TASS reported.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba announced the proposal in an interview on Monday with The Associated Press. Kuleba put out the idea of holding a Ukraine–Russia “peace summit” within the next two months.

The proposal termed that the summit be mediated by U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who Kuleba believes to be a “efficient mediator and negotiator.”

“Every war ends as a result of the actions taken on the battlefield and at the negotiating table,” Kuleba said.

Ukrainian officials have some conditions that must be heard by Russia. First, Ukraine wants Russia to be tried by an international “war crimes tribunal.”

The head of the Russian State Duma’s International Affairs Committee, Leonid Slutsky, described a proposal in which Russia would have to submit to a “war crimes tribunal” as “a smokescreen.” Secondly, the proposal stated that Russian delegates “can only be invited to [the summit] in this way.”

Russia has conditions of its own. Moscow demands recognition of the Crimean Peninsula, a Russian territory formally annexed in 2014. There are also demands for the recognition of Russian sovereignty over the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions.