Kremlin invites Moscow to the peace summit: “We need to understand what Zelensky means”
To comment on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s openness to Moscow’s participation in an upcoming peace summit in Ukraine, the Kremlin “needs to understand what he means.” As President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman explained, Dmitry Peskov, “the first peace summit was not a peace summit at all, so one must first understand what it means.” The reference was to last month’s meeting in Switzerland, without Russia.
The Kremlin’s reaction to the Kiev leader’s first opening to peace talks since shortly after the start of the war, when attempts at contact were made, was cautious. In his remarks yesterday, Zelensky announced his intention to present a plan for a “just peace” in November, the same month as the US presidential elections, as well as calling for a new peace summit in Ukraine at this time Moscow will also participate. “I think Russian representatives should participate in this second summit,” he said. Two years and 4 months after the start of the offensive in Ukraine,
Moscow controls almost 20% of the territory and there is little prospect of a ceasefire, or even a permanent peace between Kiev and Moscow, at this stage. However, this is the first time since the breakdown of talks in the spring of 2022, following the Russian attack in February, that the president of Ukraine is considering talks with Russia without the condition that he withdraw west of the territory of Ukraine first. On that occasion, in the first weeks of the Russian attack in 2022, the delegations of Russia and Ukraine met in Belarus, and then in Turkey, to try to reach a peace agreement, in vain. “If they want to invite Russia to the summit, we will support them,” US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said yesterday, noting, however, that the Kremlin has so far given no indication. that he wants a diplomatic solution to the conflict.
So far, Moscow has put an end to any peace talks until Ukraine abandons the five regions that Moscow claims to annex and abandons its alliance with the West. No decisive point can be seen on the front from either side, even if the hard and deadly fight every day; the Russian army, which is larger and equipped with greater firepower, is advancing slowly and gradually into the eastern territory, at the cost of heavy losses in men and equipment.