As she arrived at the meeting venue overlooking Lake Lucerne, Harris announced $1.5 billion in U.S. assistance through the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. That includes money for energy assistance, repairing damaged energy infrastructure, helping refugees and strengthening civilian security in the wake of the aggression by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russia’s aggression is more than just an attack “on the lives and the freedom of the people of Ukraine,” Harris told leaders from 100 nations and global organizations participating in the summit. “It is not only an attack on global food security and energy supplies.
“Russia’s aggression is also an attack on international rules and norms and the principles embodied in the U.N. Charter,” Harris said. She said the U.S. was committed to continuing “to impose costs on Russia and we will continue to work toward a just and lasting peace,” reaffirming words she used at the start of her private meeting with Zelensky.
For Zelensky, the gathering was a beginning toward finding a “real peace.”
“The world majority definitely wants to live without bloody crises, deportations and ecocides,” Zelensky said. “And so every nation that is not represented now and that shares the same values of the U.N. Charter in deed and word, will be able to join our work at the next stages.”
As the dozens of world leaders discussed how to bring peace to war-ravaged Ukraine, any hopes of a real breakthrough were muted by the absence of Russia, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
The combatants remain as far apart as they’ve ever been, with Kyiv sticking to its demands that Russia leave all Ukrainian territory it has seized and Moscow pressing on with its grinding offensive that has already taken large swaths of eastern and southern Ukraine.
Putin on Friday laid out his demands for ending the war. His proposals didn’t include any new demands, and Kyiv blasted them as “manipulative” and “absurd.”
The conference was attended by presidents or prime ministers from countries as far afield as Britain, Ecuador and Kenya, and several foreign ministers, including from Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Some key developing countries sent lower-level officials. China, which backs Russia, joined scores of countries that sat out the event.
President Biden was in Los Angeles for a fundraiser after three days at the Group of 7 summit in Italy, where he held talks with Zelensky, and an earlier trip to Normandy for the 80th anniversary of D-day.
When talk of a Swiss-hosted peace summit began last summer, Ukrainian forces had recently regained large tracts of territory, notably near the southern city of Kherson and the northern city of Kharkiv. Russian troops who control vast swaths of eastern and southern Ukraine have made territorial gains in recent months.
The agenda for the two-day summit — nuclear safety; humanitarian assistance; a prisoner of war exchange; and global food security, which has been disrupted due to impeded shipments through the Black Sea — is short of the proposals laid out by Zelensky in late 2022. That peace plan called for the withdrawal of Russian troops from occupied Ukrainian territory, the cessation of hostilities and the restoration of Ukraine’s original borders with Russia, including Russia’s withdrawal from occupied Crimea.
Putin wants any peace deal to be built around a draft agreement negotiated in the early phases of the war that included provisions for Ukraine’s neutral status and limits on its armed forces, while delaying talks about Russian-occupied areas. Ukraine’s push to join NATO over the years has rankled Moscow.
On Friday, Putin told Russian diplomats and senior lawmakers that he would “immediately” order a cease-fire and begin negotiations if Ukraine drops its bid to join NATO and starts withdrawing troops from four regions that Moscow illegally annexed in 2022.
Although Putin’s demands are a nonstarter for Ukraine, Kyiv is currently unable to negotiate from a position of strength, analysts say.
“The situation on the battlefield has changed dramatically,” said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, noting that although Russia “can’t achieve its maximalist objectives quickly through military means,” it is gaining momentum on the battlefield.
“So a lot of countries that are coming to the summit would question whether the Zelensky peace formula still has legs,” he told reporters Wednesday.
With much of the world focused on the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and national elections in 2024, Ukraine’s backers want to bring global attention back to Russia’s breach of international law and a restoration of Ukraine’s territory.
The International Crisis Group, an advisory firm that works to end conflict, wrote this week that “absent a major surprise on the Bürgenstock,” the event is “unlikely to deliver much of consequence.”
“Nonetheless, the Swiss summit is a chance for Ukraine and its allies to underline what the U.N. General Assembly recognized in 2022 and repeated in its February 2023 resolution on a just peace in Ukraine: Russia’s all-out aggression is a blatant violation of international law,” it said.
Experts said they would be looking closely at the wording of any outcome document or plans for a way forward. Swiss officials, aware of Russia’s reticence about the conference, have repeatedly said they hope Russia can join the process one day, as do Ukrainian officials.
As world leaders discussed a pathway to peace in Switzerland, the war ground on in Ukraine, where shelling killed at least three civilians and wounded 15 others on Friday and overnight into Saturday, regional officials said.
Meanwhile, Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s southern Belgorod region, blamed Ukraine in a social media post for shelling Friday that struck a five-story apartment building in the town of Shebekino, killing five people. There was no immediate comment from Kyiv.
Keaten and Madhani write for the Associated Press. Ken Moritsugu in Beijing and Joanna Kozlowska in London contributed to this report.