KYIV (Reuters) – President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Friday he had invited African leaders to take part in a global peace summit and rejected the idea of peace talks with Moscow, which he said would simply freeze the war in Ukraine.
Zelenskiy first proposed the idea of a global peace summit in November when he laid out a 10-point “peace formula” that envisages the full withdrawal of Russian troops from his country and which Kyiv says is the only viable path to peace.
Ukraine is yet to set a firm date for the peace summit because it is trying to get as many Global South nations to attend, Zelenskiy’s chief of staff said this month.
“I saw the prospects of our work on specific points of the peace formula, and, certainly, I invited the African states to participate in the peace summit that we are preparing,” Zelenskiy told a press conference with visiting African leaders.
A delegation of African leaders visited Kyiv on a peace mission on Friday, undeterred by what Ukraine said was a volley of Russian missiles intended to greet them in the capital.
(Reporting by Anna Pruchnicka and Olena Harmash; writing by Tom Balmforth; editing by Frank Jack Daniel)
