According to him, many of its participants understand “that any serious discussion has no future without the presence of Russia.”
The overwhelming majority of the more than 90 countries represented at the Bürgenstock summit in Switzerland agreed on Sunday that “dialogue between all parties” and respect for Ukraine’s territorial integrity was the path to follow to end to the Ukrainian conflict, which has lasted since the launch of the Russian offensive in February 2022.
War in Ukraine: Kremlin threatens to toughen its demands if Putin’s proposal is rejected
But neither Russia nor China were represented in Switzerland and the final communiqué did not receive the support of countries such as India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, considered close economic partners of Moscow.
According to Mr. Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, remains “always open to dialogue and serious and substantial discussions.”
For his part, Mr. Putin declared last Friday that he would negotiate with Ukraine in the event of withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from the four regions he claims and when kyiv has given up joining NATO.
In the process, his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, rejected what he said was an “ultimatum”.
Ukraine prepares for more power cuts in coming weeks
Ukraine announced on Monday that power cuts would worsen until the end of July, after a series of Russian strikes on its energy infrastructure.
Moscow has launched a bombing campaign in recent months, targeting Ukraine’s main electricity production and distribution centers and destroying, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky, half of the country’s energy capacity.
“In the coming weeks, the situation will be much more difficult than it is today,” warned Volodymyr Koudrytskiï, director of the national operator, Ukrenergo.
According to the energy supplier, maintenance work at nuclear power plants, bad weather and insufficient electricity imports will intensify already existing shortages, predicting up to 12 hours of outages per day.
Mr. Koudrytskiï specified that this “situation will continue until the end of July”.
kyiv had been forced to call on its European neighbors to import electricity to make up for the deficits in the damaged network.
Energy security and the restoration of Ukraine’s electricity grid was one of the 10 points of President Zelensky’s peace plan, discussed at the peace summit in Switzerland last weekend, to which Russia was not invited.
The first campaign of Russian strikes specifically targeting energy sites left millions of Ukrainians without power, water and heating in freezing temperatures in the winter of 2022-2023.
