(15 Jun 2024)
RESTRICTIONS SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Burgenstock, Switzerland – 15 June 2024
1. Wide of Summit on Peace in Ukraine venue
2. Close of summit banner
3. Various of security officers at the venue
4. Wide of security checks
5. Close of summit banner
6. Wide of press centre
7. Mid of news conference podiums
8. Close of flags of Ukraine and Switzerland
9. Wide of mountain
10. Close of camera filming the mountain
STORYLINE:
Swiss officials were getting ready to host a two-day conference this weekend aimed at planning the first steps towards peace in Ukraine – with Russia notably absent.
More than 50 heads of state and government, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, will join the gathering at the Burgenstock resort overlooking Lake Lucerne. Some 100 delegations including European bodies and the United Nations will be on hand.
Who will show up – and who won’t – has become one of the key stakes of a meeting that critics say will be useless without the presence of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government, which invaded Ukraine in February 2022 and is pushing ahead with the war.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is set to attend while Turkey and Saudi Arabia have dispatched their foreign ministers. Key developing countries like Brazil, an observer at the event, India and South Africa will be represented at lower levels.
China, which backs Russia, is joining scores of countries that are sitting out the conference, many of whom have more pressing issues than the bloodiest conflict in far-away Europe since World War II. Beijing says any peace process needs to have the participation of both Russia and Ukraine, and has floated its own ideas for peace.
Zelenskyy recently led a diplomatic push to draw in participants.
Russian troops who now control nearly a quarter of Ukrainian land in the east and south have made some territorial gains in recent months. When talk of a Swiss-hosted peace initiative began last summer, Ukrainian forces had recently regained large swaths of territory, notably near the cities of southern Kherson and northern Kharkiv.
Against the battlefield backdrop and diplomatic strategizing, summit organizers have presented three agenda items: nuclear safety, such as at the Russia-controlled Zaporizhzhia power plant; humanitarian assistance and exchange of prisoners of war; and global food security — which has been disrupted at times due to impeded shipments through the Black Sea.
That to-do list, encapsulating some of the least controversial issues, is well short of proposals and hopes laid out by Zelenskyy in a 10-point peace formula in late 2022.
Putin’s government, meanwhile, 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 Russia-occupied areas. Ukraine’s push over the years to join the NATO military alliance has rankled Moscow.
With much of the world’s focus recently on the war in Gaza and national elections in 2024, Ukraine’s backers want to return focus to Russia’s breach of international law and a restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
AP video shot bu Kwiyeon Ha
===========================================================
Clients are reminded to adhere to all listed restrictions and to check the terms of their licence agreements. For further assistance, please contact the AP Archive on: Tel +44(0)2074827482 Email: info@aparchive.com.
Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AP_Archive
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/APArchives
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/APNews/
You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/c1f036e317fc4c5ba322cf607d7c2fe9
