The Swiss Foreign Minister speaks on the talks in Geneva on Ukraine

Negotiations on the situation in Ukraine are taking place in Geneva “not at the highest level” and in an atmosphere of “maximum discretion”. This was announced by Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis in an interview with the newspaper Le Temps.
Cassis explained that Switzerland always offers “good offices”, but the question is what the two parties – Russia and Ukraine – will do with it.
“International Geneva, in an atmosphere of maximum discretion, accepts the negotiations, although now they are not taking place at the highest level,” the minister said (translated by Kommersant).
According to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, previously Kiev had asked Switzerland to represent its interests in Russia, but Moscow had refused.
“The Russian narrative is known: it claims that Switzerland has lost its neutrality, but at the same time it uses it as a neutral country,” Cassis added.
The foreign minister also stressed that Switzerland, as a member of the UN Security Council, was doing “everything possible” to help end the conflict, but he doubts that hostilities will end soon, ” unless a miracle happens.”
Swiss authorities began imposing sanctions against Russia in March 2022, following the European Union, aligning them with “pan-European” sanctions. The country’s authorities have frozen financial assets linked to Russia for 7.89 billion dollars.
In different cantons of Switzerland, 15 real estate properties belonging to Russian individuals and companies subject to the restrictions were also confiscated.