KREMLIN: South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa told his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on Saturday that the fighting had to stop in the Ukraine conflict.
The African delegation put forward a set of principles that the Kremlin deemed “very difficult to implement,” a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ruled out talks with Moscow.
The delegation, made up of leaders and senior officials from seven African countries, brought the voice of a continent that has badly suffered from repercussions of the conflict, particularly with rising grain prices.
“This war must be settled, through negotiations and through diplomatic means,” Ramaphosa said after talks in the suburbs of St Petersburg, adding they “would like this war to be ended.”
Ramaphosa listed 10 principles, which included de-escalation, the recognition of countries’ sovereignty, security guarantees for all countries, unimpeded grain exports through the Black Sea and sending prisoners of war and children back to their countries of origin.
The mission included the presidents of South Africa, Senegal, Comoros and Zambia, as well as top officials from Uganda, Egypt and Congo-Brazzaville.
“Any initiative is very difficult to implement,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was quoted by the state-run agency RIA Novosti. “But President Putin has shown interest in considering it.”
Putin praised the delegation’s “balanced” approach and said he was “open to a constructive dialogue with all those who want to implement peace based on the principles of justice and respect for the parties’ legitimate interests.”
Moscow has in the past repeated that any negotiations would need to take into account “new territorial realities.”
Zelenskyy, speaking on Friday after Ramaphosa called for de-escalation following their talks in Kyiv, repeated his position that Ukraine must recover territories lost to Russia to achieve peace.
