Any international summit for peace in Ukraine from which Russia is excluded is simply “absurd” and will fail, Kremlin spokesman Dmytro Peskov said in an interview published on Tuesday, according to Reuters.

Peskov also told the Argumenty and Facts publication that Russia continues the war in Ukraine that began two years ago in order to protect itself from the West.

“Is it possible to solve the Ukrainian problem without the participation of Russia? The answer is clear – it cannot be,” said Peskov in an interview last Thursday, a day before the armed attack on a concert hall on the outskirts of Moscow.

“Because Ukraine has been turned into a tool in the hands of the collective West, with the help of which they intend, it seems, to increase the pressure on Russia, to limit Russia and leave it on the sidelines of development. And if it succeeds, finish it,” he added.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called for an international peace summit, and earlier this year Switzerland said it would host the meeting and that the date and details were being discussed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has already condemned as unworkable the Ukrainian peace plan, which calls for the withdrawal of Russian troops and the restoration of Kyiv’s 1991 borders, including Crimea, a peninsula illegally annexed by Russia in 2014.

Peskov reiterated that the plan was unthinkable and condemned plans discussed by the European Union and other countries to take control of profits from frozen Russian assets after the 2022 invasion and transfer them to Ukraine.

“I think the Europeans understand that we will appeal against such a decision. We are talking, perhaps, not about one year, but about decades,” he said.