Russia: Upcoming Ukraine-West summit in Saudi Arabia a 'sham'

Russia has said that a planned meeting on Ukraine scheduled to be held in Saudi Arabia this week is intended to forge an anti-Russian coalition.

"The meeting initiated by the Kiev regime and its Western curators to promote Volodymyr  Zelensky's [peace] formula is a sham," the Tass news agency quoted the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova as saying on Wednesday.

"It’s another staged event to gather caring states under the guise of putting together an anti-Russian coalition, showing the pseudo unity of the world in terms of rejecting Russia's actions," she said.

Zakharova noted that the meeting was "bait" for those countries that are honestly seeking a peaceful settlement of the Ukrainian conflict in order to avoid further escalation.

"This is neither a conference of a scientific and practical nature nor a meeting of diplomats to find political solutions, but an attempt to take advantage of the sincere intentions of a number of states in order to forge an anti-Russian coalition," she said.

She added that these countries had been invited "with the aim of developing some kind of supposed peace initiative, to settle the situation."

 The Wall Street Journal recently quoted sources as saying that Saudi Arabia planned to hold peace talks on Ukraine in Jeddah on August 5-6.

It was reported that the European Union, Britain, Poland and South Africa had already confirmed their participation in the consultations, and the presence of US presidential national security advisor Jake Sullivan was expected.

Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier that the meeting in Saudi Arabia would help the West to realize that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky's so-called peace plan is a dead end.

SS