Volodymyr Zelenskyy has invited Russia to the next peace summit despite previously saying it could only join if it relinquished land in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian president refused to invite Russia to the first peace summit in Switzerland last month to the consternation of some officials who questioned whether peace could be achieved without both parties present.
On Wednesday, Mr Zelenskyy appeared to soften his stance, acknowledging the possibility of a Russian delegation attending.
“If the second peace summit has a plan to end the war, and we have more countries, we will organise it and Russian representatives must be present. Who? We will see,” Mr Zelenskyy told Bloomberg News.
On whether Vladimir Putin could attend, he said: “I’m not sure, I think he is afraid to leave Russia. Is it possible that somebody else besides Putin comes? Maybe by this time, there will be somebody else in the Kremlin, then we will talk to somebody else.”
Analysts largely derided the first Ukrainian-organised peace summit as an attempt by the West to generate a show of support for Ukraine rather than actually find an end to the war.
In the build-up to the Swiss peace summit, the Kremlin and its key ally, China, had also charmed, cajoled and pressured nations in Asia, Africa and the Middle East into supporting a boycott. The summit ended with a vague promise of a follow-up meeting but no concrete plans.
Mr Zelenskyy used his interview with Bloomberg to also turn down Putin’s offer of a ceasefire, which he has previously described as a trap. However, he suggested that the US and China could act as intermediaries.
“There are many questions between the two but if we want to end this war fairly, for Ukraine and for the whole world, they have to find a stance to stop Putin,” he said.
This week Western intelligence sources said that Chinese factories were making drones to send to Russia.
China’s influence over Russia has grown since Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with Finnish President Alexander Stubb saying that Beijing could end the war with “one phone call” threatening to withdraw economic and diplomatic support.
Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping have been meeting this week in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, at a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), an economic-military alliance that they lead.
At the summit, Xi said that SCO member states needed to support each other, although he stopped short of calling for a military pact.
“We should join hands to resist external interference, firmly support each other, take care of each other’s concerns,” he said.
The SCO was set up in 2001 and was originally focused on former Soviet Central Asia. This remit has expanded and on Thursday Belarus joined the group. Iran, India and Pakistan are also SCO members.
Temur Umarov, a Fellow at the Carnegie Centre think tank, said that the SCO’s main importance was as a platform for leaders to meet away from the West’s influence rather than as an anti-West alliance.
“Russia is trying to use it to gain support for its aggression in Ukraine but it doesn’t have the sympathies of all SCO members,” he said. “Everybody else wants to remain neutral.”
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