US on China's absence at peace summit in Switzerland
US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller (GettyImages)
The United States supports a peace summit on Ukraine. At the same time, the White House does not understand how the Chinese side can contribute to this, according to US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.
Answering journalists' questions about whether Washington shares Kyiv's concerns about China's absence at the summit, Miller said that the United States does not currently see how China can play a positive role in resolving the war.
According to the State Department spokesperson, the United States has always made it clear that China could play a useful diplomatic role in resolving this conflict if it wanted to.
"But it’s hard to see how they could play that role given the actions that we’ve seen China take over recent months to rebuild, reconstitute Russia’s defense industrial base," Miller said.
Instead, he added that Washington plans to continue to engage in dialogue with Beijing about its dissatisfaction with such actions and plans to hold the organizations involved accountable.
Support for peace summit
At the same time, Miller emphasized the US support for Ukraine's diplomatic efforts and expressed expectations for the success of the event.
"We support the peace summit. We want it to be successful, and that’s why you see the Vice President of the United States attending that summit. We support Ukraine’s diplomatic efforts," he added.
When asked whether US Secretary of State Antony Blinken would attend the event, Miller said he did not have such information and "did not have any information on that yet."
Peace summit in Switzerland
The first peace summit initiated by Ukraine and Switzerland will be held on June 15-16 in the Swiss resort of Burgenstock.
It is currently known that 107 countries and international organizations have confirmed their participation in the event.
Today it became known that representatives of the United Nations will join the peace summit.
At the same time, several countries refused to be represented at the peace summit. Read more about this in RBC-Ukraine's article.
