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The leaders of seven African nations hoping for an end to the war in Ukraine traveled to Russia Saturday to hold peace talks with Vladimir Putin but received a largely negative response.
The African delegation — which included presidents of Comoros, Senegal, South Africa and Zambia, as well as Egypt’s prime minister and top envoys from the Republic of Congo and Uganda — made the trip to St. Petersburg after visiting Ukraine on Friday.
The self-styled “peace mission” was the first of its kind by the leaders of the African countries that rely on food and fertilizer exports from Ukraine and Russia, which have been impeded by the war.
“This conflict is affecting Africa negatively,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said at a press conference alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and four other African leaders after their closed-door talks Friday.
“I do believe that Ukrainians feel that they must fight and not give up,” he said. “The road to peace is very hard.”
“There is a need to bring this conflict to an end sooner rather than later,” Ramaphosa added.
The group of African leaders notably hail from countries that have taken different stances on Russia and the war in Ukraine.
Egypt, Zambia, and Comoros voted against Russia in a United Nations Assembly resolution last year condemning the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine while South Africa, Senegal, and Uganda have avoided censuring Moscow over the conflict.
Saturday, after presentations from the Comoran, Senegalese and South African leaders on the group’s 10-point peace plan, and before the other delegations made their prepared comments, Putin interrupted to challenge the assumptions of the plan.
He maintained that Ukraine and the West had started the conflict long before Russia’s Feburary 2022 invasion, and blamed the West for the sharp rise in global food prices last year.
Putin claimed that Ukrainian grain exports from Black Sea ports that Russia permitted under an agreement reached last year were doing nothing for Africa because they were going to wealth countries instead. And he claimed that Russia has never refused peace talks with Ukraine.
Russia is “open to constructive dialogue with anyone who wants to establish peace on the principles of fairness and acknowledgment of the legitimate interests of the parties,” Putin said.
Russia has repeatedly said that any deal must reflect the “new realities,” meaning its annexation of five provinces in eastern Ukraine.
Zelensky repeated during the group’s visit to Kyiv that peace talks will only be possible after Moscow withdraws its forces from occupied territory, including Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2019.
During their visit in Ukraine, Zelensky asked the African leaders to push Putin to free political prisoners from Crimea, which was annexed in 2014.
“Would you please ask Russia to liberate the political prisoners?” Zelensky said. “Maybe this will be an important result of your mission, of your ‘road map’.”
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