African leaders discuss peace with Putin
KYIV — Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday met with a group of leaders of African countries who traveled to Russia on a self-styled “peace mission” the day after they went to Ukraine.
Seven African leaders — the 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 — visited Ukraine on Friday to try to help end the nearly 16month war.
The African leaders then traveled to St. Petersburg on Saturday to meet with Putin, who was attending a business forum in Russia's second-largest city.
Details about the delegation’s proposals were thin.
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after the threehour meeting that the Africans’ peace plan consisted of 10 elements, but “was not formulated on paper.”
“The peace initiative proposed by African countries is very difficult to implement, difficult to compare positions,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said. But ”President Putin has shown interest in considering it.”
Speaking at the forum on Friday, Putin declared that the first Russian tactical nuclear weapons have been deployed to Belarus, describing the move as a deterrent against Western efforts to defeat Russia in Ukraine. He previously said that the deployment would begin in July.
Asked if he could order the use of battlefield nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Putin said that there was no need for that but noted that Moscow could use its nuclear arsenals in case of a “threat to the Russian statehood.”
“In that case, we will certainly use all the means that the Russian state has. There should be no doubt about that,” he said.
The mission to Ukraine, the first of its kind by African leaders, came in the wake of other peace initiatives — such as one by China — and carried particular importance for Africa, which relies on food and fertilizer deliveries from Russia and Ukraine. The war has impeded exports from one of the world’s most important breadbaskets.
“This conflict is affecting Africa negatively,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said at a news conference alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and four other African leaders after their closeddoor talks on Friday.
Ramaphosa and others acknowledged the intensity of the hostilities but insisted all wars must come to an end and emphasized their willingness to help expedite that.
“I do believe that Ukrainians feel that they must fight and not give up. The road to peace is very hard,” he said, adding that “there is a need to bring this conflict to an end sooner rather than later.”
Chances for peace talks looked dim, however, as Ukraine and Russia have taken sharply different stands.