Zelensky issues direct warning to Joe Biden over peace summit

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a warning to his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden on Tuesday over his attendance at a Kyiv-led peace summit in Switzerland next month.

Biden’s absence from the talks on June 15 and 16—which will be aimed at developing a common understanding of a path toward a just and lasting peace in Ukraine—would be like giving Russian President Vladimir Putin a standing ovation, Zelensky told reporters during a press briefing in Brussels, Belgium.

Washington has said that the U.S. will participate in the summit but hasn’t said whether Biden will be attending. Bloomberg reported on May 23, citing people familiar with the matter, that the U.S. president will likely miss the event because it clashes with a campaign fundraiser in California.

Russia hasn’t been invited to participate in the summit.

“If [Biden] is not present, it will be just like applauding Putin: personally applauding and doing so standing,” Zelensky said, as he urged as many countries as possible to participate in his peace summit.

“I believe that the Peace Summit needs President Biden, and other leaders who are looking at the U.S. response also need him,” he said, adding that he believes attending or skipping the event is a reflection of a nation’s “choice” between wanting peace or war in Ukraine.

“If you want peace, you will be there and you will speak, even if you don’t agree with something,” he said. “And if you want war, you will go to the mob that Russia wants to organize.

“Putin is very scared of the peace summit. He has been trying to thwart this summit and continues to do so.”

Newsweek has contacted the U.S. State Department for comment by email.

The prospect of peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow has been raised multiple times, without success, since Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

On Friday, Reuters reported, citing four anonymous Russian sources familiar with the matter, that Putin is ready to “freeze” the war in Ukraine on current frontlines.

The Kremlin has previously specified a few conditions that are non-negotiable for Russia, including that Ukraine must accept the September 2022 annexation of four of its regions—Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia—following referendums called by Putin that were deemed illegal by the international community.

Ukraine has said that any peace deal must invalidate the September 2022 annexations of its territory, and that the Crimean Peninsula, which Putin annexed in 2014, must once again be considered part of Ukraine.

Switzerland has invited more than 160 delegations from around the world to join the peace summit. As of May 24, there were more than 70 confirmations.

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