Russia said Thursday that it saw no point in attending a conference in Switzerland to discuss how to end the conflict in Ukraine.
Switzerland is expected to host the talks June 15-16 at the request of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis said more than 100 countries would be invited to the gathering.
“The first country that we spoke with, after Ukraine, of course, was Russia, because a peace process cannot happen without Russia, even if it won’t be there for the first meeting,” Cassis told reporters in the Swiss capital, Bern.
"We know that it doesn't make sense to have Russia at the table if you cannot ensure that they act in good faith," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said in an interview with Foreign Policy magazine published this week.
Kuleba said putting pressure on Russia on the battlefield and bringing together countries "who share principles" should help to make Moscow more willing to engage in dialog.
The conference is "practically the first real chance to start restoring a just peace," Zelenskyy said Thursday in his nightly video message.
The Swiss government said Thursday that Russia was not currently invited to the conference. It said it was open to including Russia, but Moscow repeatedly expressed it had no interest.
Russian strikes
Russia struck Ukraine twice on Thursday. A Russian guided bomb attack injured at least eight children and one adult in the northeastern Kharkiv region, Ukrainian officials said. Two Ukrainian officials said a separate Russian missile attack injured 14 people at a postal facility in the southern city of Odesa.
Russia has denied targeting civilians during its invasion of Ukraine but has repeatedly struck Ukrainian cities with drones and missiles during more than two years of attacks.
Russian officials reported Ukrainian drone attacks Thursday targeting several regions.
Russia on Thursday rejected U.S. accusations of using a banned chemical agent in Ukraine. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called the allegation “baseless.”
The United States accused Russia on Wednesday of breaching a global chemical weapons ban by deploying the choking agent chloropicrin against Ukrainian troops.
The State Department also accused Russia of using riot control agents "as a method of warfare" in Ukraine.
"The use of such chemicals is not an isolated incident and is probably driven by Russian forces' desire to dislodge Ukrainian forces from fortified positions and achieve tactical gains on the battlefield," the State Department said in a statement.
Russian forces have also used grenades loaded with CS and CN tear gases, according to the Ukrainian military. It said at least 500 Ukrainian soldiers have been treated for exposure to toxic substances, and one was killed by suffocating on tear gas.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
