Denmark offers to host Ukraine peace talks, wants India, China, Brazil to attend

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COPENHAGEN, May 22 (Reuters) – Denmark would like to host a summit in July aimed at finding peace between Ukraine and Russia, but such a meeting would need engagement from India, China and Brazil, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said Monday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Sunday sought global support at the G7 meeting in Japan for Kyiv’s plan to end Russia’s war in Ukraine and proposed to hold a global summit in July.

“If Ukraine finds that the time has come to have such a meeting, that would be fantastic. And then Denmark would obviously like to host the meeting,” Lokke Rasmussen told reporters on the sidelines of the EU Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels.

A proposal in December by Ukraine to hold a peace summit in February this year never materialized.

“For starters, we need to put some effort into creating a global commitment to organise such a meeting,” Lokke Rasmussen said, adding that a summit should not just be attended by Ukraine’s allies.

“It is necessary to build interest and involvement from countries like India, Brazil and China,” he said. “It is hard for me to see” Russia taking part, he added.

Zelenskiy last year proposed a 10-point peace plan, which calls on Russia to withdraw all its troops from Ukraine and to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

The details of its implementation should be discussed at the proposed peace summit, Zelenskiy’s administration said in a statement on Sunday.

Lokke Rasmussen said he welcomed a decision by Washington to support joint allied training programmes for Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets.

“It makes sense to begin training of Ukrainian pilots as soon as possible,” Lokke Rasmussen said, adding it was too early to say if Denmark would supply F-16s to Ukraine.

Reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen; editing by Jason Neely

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Based in Copenhagen, Jacob oversees reporting from Denmark, Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands. Specializes in security and geopolitics in the Arctic and Baltic Sea regions, as well as large corporates such as brewer Carlsberg and shipping group A.P. Moller-Maersk. His most impactful reporting on Arctic issues include a report on how NATO allies are slowly waking up to Russian supremacy in the region, uncovering how Greenland represents a security black hole for Denmark and its allies, and how an abundance of critical minerals has proven a curse for Greenland.
Before moving to Copenhagen in 2016, Jacob spent seven years in Moscow covering Russia’s oil and gas industry for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal, followed by four years in Singapore covering energy markets for WSJ and Reuters. As a Russian speaker, he has been involved in covering the war in Ukraine. He publishes a newsletter each weekday focused on the most important regional and global news. Contact Jacob via email if you are interested in receiving the newsletter.

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