Russia is balking at a scheduled summit in Switzerland aimed at seeking an end to the war in Ukraine, according to a state-run news agency. The government says it will not participate. 

“American Democrats, who need photos and videos of events that supposedly indicate their project ‘Ukraine’ is still afloat, are behind this,” a foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said, according to a state-run news agency, Tass. 

On Wednesday, the Swiss government announced that it would host a conference at the Bürgenstock resort near Lucerne on June 15 and 16. 

Switzerland’s foreign minister, Ignazio Cassis, said that “the first country that we spoke with” — after Ukraine of course — was Russia, because a peace process cannot happen without Russia, even if it won’t be there for the first meeting.”

President Biden will be in the region at the time. The G7 meeting will be held in Italy June 13-15. The White House has yet to publicly comment on the Swiss peace summit. 

“At its meeting today, the Federal Council took note of the results to date and discussed the next steps. There is currently sufficient international support for a high-level conference to launch the peace process,” the Swiss government said in a statement, according to ABC News.

Both the Swiss and Ukrainian governments said that delegations from dozens of countries, including Communist China, have been invited to attend the conference. 

More than two years into the Ukraine war and after the besieged country had some success in retaking stolen territory, experts now say that Ukraine is losing ground after a monthslong stalemate. In February, a former American secretary of defense, Robert Gates, told the Washington Post that Russia has regained “momentum” in its ground war. 

“It’s no longer a stalemate. The Russians have regained momentum,” Mr. Gates told the Post’s David Ignatius in an interview. “Everything I’m reading is that the Russians are on the offensive along the 600-mile front.”

America has not delivered an aid package to Ukraine in more than four months. The Pentagon announced in a letter to Speaker Johnson and other congressional committee chairmen in December that it would deliver a $1 billion aid package after Christmas, but that Congress needed to appropriate more money if military equipment and economic assistance was to be sent. 

Mr. Johnson has for months stalled on a potential Ukraine aid package, saying consistently that Mr. Biden needs to address the crisis at the southern border before any foreign aid is sent. 

On Wednesday, Republican Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick — a fierce proponent of more Ukraine aid — said that the speaker had promised to put a package on the floor in the coming days.

Mr. Johnson is facing a move to oust him by Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene due to his support for funding the federal government, but she says she will officially force a vote on Mr. Johnson’s removal if the speaker does put such an aid package on the floor of the House.