Heads of state and senior officials from seven African countries, including South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, will meet Russian president Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg on Saturday to present a peace proposal. The delegation held talks in Kyiv a day earlier with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who told them Ukraine “won’t achieve diplomacy with Russia while they are on our territory.”
Mr Zelenskiy and the African leaders had testy exchanges Friday on how to end the war with Russia, hours after Russian forces fired missiles at the capital while the African heads of government were there.
The African leaders spoke of hope and dialogue after talking to Mr Zelenskiy, but the Ukrainian leader ruled out peace talks until Moscow withdraws its troops from occupied territory, and he called for Russia to be frozen out diplomatically.
President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa laid out a plan for de-escalation of fighting by both countries, a prisoner exchange, the return of children taken from Ukraine and the free flow of grain and fertiliser to world markets. But toward the end of their joint news conference, Mr Zelenskiy said he did not clearly understand the “roadmap” mentioned by the visiting leaders.
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“I don’t want to have any surprises because tomorrow, you’ll have conversations with the terrorist, and then this terrorist will have proposals to you,” Mr Zelenskiy said.
Russia and Ukraine are vying for backing from Africa, which along with the rest of the developing world has been disproportionately impacted by the war and related disruptions to food supplies. About half of Africa’s 55 nations have supported UN resolutions condemning Russia’s invasion; others have sought to remain non-aligned.
Kyiv’s troops made gains on at least three fronts on Friday as they press on with what’s expected to be a lengthy counteroffensive in the east and south. Deputy minister for defence Hanna Mailer said Ukraine had advanced as much as two kilometres in the south; Russia hasn’t commented. Ukraine’s defence ministry repeated its urgent call for high-precision, long-range weapons. Separately, Mr Zelenskiy told NBC that Ukraine isn’t “asking for spaceships” as it presses for the fast delivery of fighter jets.
Mr Putin confirmed that Russia followed through on a plan announced in March to transfer tactical nuclear warheads to neighbouring Belarus for storage, a move decried by opposition leaders in the Russian ally. Russia’s president also said he sees no need to use nuclear arms for now. US president Joe Biden condemned Russia’s deployment of nuclear warheads in Belarus as “totally irresponsible”.
While the United States and its allies have sought to isolate Russia, economically and diplomatically, since its full-scale invasion in February 2022, the Kremlin has worked hard to cement its African alliances. More than a dozen African countries have abstained from United Nations votes to condemn Russia or to call for its withdrawal from Ukraine, with a handful voting in support of Moscow.
Mr Ramaphosa announced the peace initiative last month, just days after the US ambassador to South Africa accused the country of providing arms to Russia, which South Africans officials have denied.
Referring to the African leaders, Mr Zelenskiy said on Friday: “My colleagues, some of them keep continuously calling this war a conflict. This is their own right. But this tells about our different views of the situation. This is a war.”
“Putin ‘builds confidence’ by launching the largest missile attack on Kyiv in weeks, exactly amid the visit of African leaders to our capital,” Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, wrote on Twitter. “Russian missiles are a message to Africa: Russia wants more war, not peace.”
But if Ukrainian officials hoped that experiencing Russian bombardment first-hand might influence the African leaders’ views, there was no sign of such a shift.
Vincent Magwenya, a spokesperson for Mr Ramaphosa and a member of the delegation, said that its members did not hear air-raid sirens or explosions in Kyiv. “Since our arrival, and based on where we have been, we have not witnessed any of the reported sirens or explosions,” he said. “That’s from my own experience and that of our own delegation.”
The Russian barrage on Friday included six hypersonic Kinzhal missiles – among the most sophisticated weapons in the Kremlin’s arsenal – and six Kalibr cruise missiles, all of which were destroyed before hitting their targets, Kyiv’s military administration said in a statement. The capital’s air defences have grown very robust, but those in other parts of the country remain sparse.
The African delegation arrived in Kyiv by train from Poland. Before meeting Mr Zelenskiy, its members visited Bucha, the neighbouring town where the New York Times and others have documented Russian atrocities after the invasion, and where hundreds of civilians were killed while it was under Russian occupation.
Liubov Abravitova, the Ukrainian ambassador to South Africa, said in an interview on Friday that she hoped the visit would strike an emotional chord.
“My hope is that what they’ve seen today in Bucha will always be in front of their eyes when they will be shaking hands with Putin,” she said.
Some analysts have questioned whether the African peace mission could realistically bear fruit, but its supporters note that among the proponents of various peace initiatives, the African delegation will be the first to meet the leaders of both Russia and Ukraine.
“We’re here to listen, to listen to both president Zelenskiy and tomorrow we’ll be listening to president Putin,” Mr Ramaphosa said. No one expects a quick resolution, he said, but African countries stand ready to mediate.
Neither side in the war is willing to end it on terms the other would accept. Moscow insists that Ukraine accept Russian sovereignty over the lands it has seized, demilitarise and distance itself from the Nato alliance. Kyiv insists that Russian forces leave all occupied territory.
On another diplomatic front, Nato defence ministers meeting in Brussels on Friday discussed closer co-operation with Ukraine, but the secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, ruled out Ukraine being offered membership when Nato heads of government meet next month in Vilnius, Lithuania.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Additional reporting: Reuters
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