Closing summary
Saudi Arabia, India, South Africa, Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates were among countries participating at a summit on peace for Ukraine that did not sign a final communique, the Swiss government has said, Reuters reports. Brazil, which attended the summit as an “observer” country, did not sign on, but Turkey — which has sought a role as intermediary between Russia and Ukraine — did.
The vast majority – 80 of the 90 or so countries taking part – did sign the communique. The statement reiterated that Ukraine’s “territorial integrity” should be respected in any peace deal to end the war.
The final document also called for all prisoners of war to be released in a “complete exchange” and for all Ukrainian children who had been “deported and unlawfully displaced” to be returned to Ukraine. Working groups at the summit also addressed the issues of global food security and nuclear safety. And the countries also called for Ukraine to have “full sovereign control” over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the participants at this weekend’s peace summit had agreed to continue working in special groups afterwards and that once “action plans for peace” were ready, a path to a second summit would be open.
US national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Sunday dismissed a peace proposal presented by Russia’s president Vladimir Putin as unreasonable, saying meeting Moscow’s demands would make Kyiv even more vulnerable to further aggression. “Not only does Ukraine have to give up the territory that Russia currently occupies but Ukraine has to leave additional sovereign Ukrainian territory,” Sullivan said at the peace summit.
Canada plans to host a gathering of foreign ministers in the coming months to advance work on the human cost of the war in Ukraine, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said.
Hostages held at a detention centre in Russia’s southern region of Rostov by detainees affiliated with Isis were released unharmed and their captors killed after special forces stormed the facility. It was not immediately clear how many of the six hostage-takers had been killed.
Kyiv held its first LGBTQ+ pride march since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Several hundred LGBTQ+ Ukrainian servicemen and women and their supporters marched in central Kyiv to demand more rights and highlight their service to their country in its war with Russia.
A follow-up summit to this weekend’s talks in Switzerland aimed at paving the way for peace in Ukraine is conceivable before the US presidential election in November, Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis said, Reuters reports.
Where the next conference could be held was unclear at the conclusion of the summit of world leaders in Switzerland.
