US Vice President Kamala Harris has rejected Russian President Vladimir Putin's conditions for peace negotiations with Ukraine as absurd.
"We must speak truth. He is not calling for negotiations, he is calling for surrender," Harris asserted at the Ukraine peace conference in Switzerland on Saturday.
"America stands with Ukraine not out of charity, but because it is in our strategic interest," she added.
On Friday, immediately before the summit, Putin had demanded that Ukraine completely renounce the territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhya and the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea as a condition for an end to hostilities.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry immediately rejected this as absurd and manipulative. "Putin is not seeking peace, he wants to divide the world," it said from Kiev.
A key aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that in Kiev's view, Russia is the only country that wants to continue the war.
"This summit was convened to start the peace process," Ihor Zhovka, the deputy head of Zelensky's office said on Saturday, noting that all the countries that want to make an effective contribution to a peace solution are gathered in Switzerland.
"And now let's focus on whether Russia understands that it is in fact the only aggressor country that is intent on continuing this aggression," Zhovka was further quoted as saying by the Ukrainian Unian agency.
Russia was not invited to take part in the conference at a Swiss luxury hotel. China, an important ally of Moscow, is also not attending.