President Amherd, President Zelenskyy, thank you for hosting this Summit. And more than that, congratulations on a tremendous success in this Summit. You have gathered 100 countries and institutions from all parts of the world, all regions, representing people from everywhere and showing that there is broad and deep support for a just peace. More than that though, what this Summit has done is define what the core character - the core foundation - of what a just peace looks like, and that is the principles of the United Nations Charter, the principles of international law, the notion of sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the basic proposition that no nation should be allowed to conquer another nation by force. Period.
And that has created a platform upon which Ukraine can stand going forward to negotiate from a position of confidence to secure its sovereignty and territorial integrity and to secure the just peace that the people of Ukraine deserve. Even beyond that, the working groups today gave momentum to the practical steps that we all need to take together on food security, nuclear security, and, of course, the return of abducted children and the monstrous act of abducting those children, taking them from their homes and families, must be rectified and those children must be returned.
What is most interesting in watching these last two days is the split screen of this weekend with what we heard from President Putin as he laid out his vision for peace a couple of days ago, where he said not only does Ukraine have to give up the territory that Russia currently occupies, but Ukraine has to leave additional sovereign Ukrainian territory before Russia will negotiate. And Ukraine must disarm so that it is vulnerable to future Russian aggression down the road. No responsible nation can say that is a reasonable basis for peace. It defies the UN Charter, it defies basic morality, it defies basic common sense.
By contrast, the vision of peace that was put forward here today from so many different countries, rooted in principles that all of us signed up to. Rooted in principles that all of us would like to live in a world that are ruled by those principles because they make us all safe. This is the right vision as we go forward. And so this Summit from our perspective is a critical milestone on a path toward a just peace and the United States of America will proudly walk with Ukraine along that path until Ukraine prevails and peace prevails.
