Jul 28 (Reuters) – African leaders pressed Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday to go ahead with his peace plan to end the Ukraine conflict and renew an agreement on the safe export of wartime Ukrainian grain that Moscow broke last week.
While they did not directly criticize Russia, their interventions on the second day of a summit were more concerted and forceful than any African countries have so far expressed.
They served as reminders of the depth of African concern about the consequences of the war, especially rising food prices.
“This war must end. And it can only end on the basis of justice and reason,” African Union Commission Chairman Moussa Faki Mahamat told Putin and African leaders in St. Petersburg.
“The interruptions in the supply of energy and grains must end immediately. The grain agreement must be extended to the benefit of all the peoples of the world, Africans in particular.”
Reuters reported in June that the African plan poses a series of possible steps to defuse the conflict, including withdrawing Russian troops, removing Russian tactical nuclear weapons from Belarus, suspending an ICC arrest warrant against Putin, and easing sanctions.
Putin gave him a cool reception when introduced to him by African leaders last month. On Friday, he said that Moscow respected the proposal and was studying it carefully, and that Ukraine would be discussed later at a working dinner.
The President of the Republic of the Congo, Denis Sassou Nguesso, said that the African initiative “deserves the greatest attention”, and called “urgently” for peace.
Senegalese President Macky Sall called for “detente to help create calm”, while South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said he hoped “constructive compromise and negotiation” could help end the conflict.
The stream of calls led Putin to repeatedly defend Russia’s position and blame Ukraine and the West.
He said it was kyiv that was refusing to negotiate under a decree passed shortly after it claimed last September to have annexed four Ukrainian regions that Russia partially controls.
‘NEW REALITIES’
Russia has long said it is open to talks, but that they must take into account “new realities” on the ground.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has now rejected the idea of a ceasefire that would leave Russia in control of nearly a fifth of his country and give his forces time to regroup after a grueling 17-month war.
AU Chairman Azali Assoumani offered some support for Putin’s line, saying the Russian leader had shown his willingness to talk and “now we have to convince the other side.”
At the summit, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi urged Russia to revive the Black Sea grain deal that, until Moscow refused to renew it last week, had allowed Ukraine to export grain from its ports despite the conflict.
Egypt is a big buyer of grains via the Black Sea route, and Sisi told the summit that reaching an agreement was “essential” to revive the deal.
Putin responded by arguing, as he has done in the past, that rising world food prices were a consequence of Western policy mistakes long before the war in Ukraine.
He has repeatedly said that Russia left the deal because the deal was not getting grain to poorer countries and the West was not living up to its end of the deal.
Russia’s withdrawal and its bombardment of Ukraine’s ports and grain warehouses have prompted accusations from Ukraine and the West that it is using food as a weapon of war and have pushed up the world price of wheat by 9%.
The Ukrainian Grain Association estimated in May that 4 million metric tons of Ukrainian grain had been stolen since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February last year.
On Thursday, Putin promised to hand out up to 300,000 tons of free Russian grain, which UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called a “handful of donations”, among six of the countries attending the summit.
Assoumani said Putin’s offer might not be enough and that what was needed was a ceasefire.
Putin was seeking to use the event to inject new impetus into Russia’s ties with Africa and win its support to counter what he describes as US hegemony and Western neocolonialism.
Many of the leaders had warm words for Moscow’s record of supporting their countries in their liberation struggles of the 20th century, and the final declaration promised that Russia would help them seek compensation for the damage caused by colonial rule and ensure the restoration of looted cultural treasures.
The leaders of Mali and the Central African Republic, whose governments have largely relied on the services of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group, expressed their gratitude to Putin.
President Faustin Archange Touadera said the Central African Republic’s relations with Russia had helped it save its democracy and avoid civil war, thanking Russia “for helping us oppose foreign hegemony.”
Reporting by Mark Trevelyan and Kevin Liffey; Additional reporting from the offices of Joe Bavier, Alexander Winning and Reuters; Edited by Angus MacSwan and Grant McCool
Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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