Zelensky hopes Ukraine peace summit will hasten ‘just end’ to war

PARIS: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that he hoped a summit hosted by Switzerland this month on bringing peace to Ukraine could hasten a fair end to the conflict.

“The inaugural peace summit could become a format that would bring closer a just end to this war,” Zelensky told the French parliament in an address more than two years after Russia invaded Ukraine.

“I am grateful for all you are already doing and it is a lot. But for a fair peace, more must be done,” he said.

He warned that 80 years after the D-Day landings of World War II, Europe was “unfortunately no longer a continent of peace”. “It is in Ukraine that lies the key to the security of Europe,” he said, implying peace could not be made along the current lines of control.

“Because without control on Ukraine, Russia will have to be a normal national state and not a colonial empire that is constantly looking for new territory in Europe, as well as Asia and Africa,” he said.

Zelensky was speaking in the French parliament after world leaders marked 80 years since the D-Day landings in World War II.

US President Joe Biden has told Zelenskiy that Washington “will not walk away” from Ukraine as both leaders met for talks in Paris today.