Switzerland and Austria said they were ready on Tuesday to welcome Russian President Vladimir Putin, despite the arrest warrant of the International Criminal Court (ICC) targeting him, for a summit with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.
According to the rules defined last year, the Swiss federal government can grant “immunity to a person who is under an international arrest warrant”, if it comes “for a peace conference, not for private reasons,” said Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis.
It was the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who mentioned the possibility that a possible summit between Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, stands in Europe and “it will be a neutral country, and therefore perhaps Switzerland”. He says he plead for Geneva, UN European seat.
In neighboring Austria, Chancellor Christian Store also proposed to welcome such a meeting, recalling “the long tradition” in this area, host of many international organizations (OPEC, AIEA, OSCE …).
“If the negotiations take place in Vienna, we will contact the ICC” in order to “clarify the question” and to “allow the president (Vladimir) Putin to participate,” added the Chancellery in a declaration transmitted to the media.
The Russian president is targeted by an arrest warrant for the court due to the “illegal” transfer of Ukrainian children to Russia.
These two options may not be to the taste of the Kremlin.
Russia sulks Switzerland, which has decided to inflict the sanctions decided by the European Union in Moscow and imposed since the large -scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia in 2022.
“I have constantly recalled this availability (to organize meetings) during my contacts with the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Lavrov, in recent months,” said the head of Swiss diplomacy. But “I was told that since Switzerland adopted European sanctions, they have naturally lost a little desire” to come.
Mr. Cassis also reported a recent precedent during the assembly of the International Parliamentary Union which saw the President of the Russian Senate coming to Geneva, Valentina Matvienko. This close to Vladimir Putin is also the subject of sanctions for his support for war.
The links have, the same, notably degraded in recent years between Moscow and Vienna.
Thanks to its deck position between the blocks acquired during the Cold War, Austria, a neutral country member of the EU but not NATO, previously maintained good relations with Russia.
The latest bilateral Russian-Ukrainian discussions took place in Istanbul, Turkey which, despite its membership in the Atlantic Alliance, is deemed more friendly by Moscow.
