No visible progress in Putin's meeting with African leaders on Ukraine

Russian President Vladimir Putin has met with a group of leaders of African countries who travelled to Russia on a "peace mission" the day after they went to Ukraine, but the meeting ended with no visible progress.

The 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 16-month-old war.

The African leaders then traveled to St. Petersburg on Saturday to meet with Putin who was attending Russia's showpiece international economic forum.

Putin reiterated his position that Ukraine and its Western allies had started the conflict long before Russia sent its armed forces over the border in February last year.

He said the West, not Russia, was responsible for a sharp rise in global food prices early last year that has hit Africa especially hard.

He told the delegation that Ukrainian grain exports from Black Sea ports that Russia has permitted for the past year were doing nothing to alleviate Africa's difficulties with high food prices because they had largely gone to wealthy countries.

And he said Russia had never refused talks with the Ukrainian side, which had been blocked by Kiev.

Moscow has, however, repeatedly said any peace must allow for "new realities", meaning its declared annexation of five Ukrainian provinces, four of which it only partially controls — a red line for Kiev.

True causes of the crisis

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after the three-hour 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."

"He spoke about our position. Not all provisions can be correlated with the main elements of our position, but this does not mean that we do not need to continue working," Peskov said.

"The main conclusion, in my opinion, from today's conversation is that our partners from the African Union have shown an understanding of the true causes of the crisis that was created by the West, and have shown an understanding that it is necessary to get out of this situation on the basis of addressing these underlying causes," Lavrov said.

Russia says that it was effectively forced to send troops into Ukraine because it was threatened by Ukraine's desire to join NATO and by the country's support from the United States and Western Europe.

The mission to Ukraine, the first of its kind by African leaders, comes in the wake of other peace initiatives — such as one by China — and carries 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 Zelenskyy and four other African leaders after their closed-door talks on Friday.

Ramaphosa and others acknowledged the intensity of the hostilities but insisted all wars must come to an end and emphasised their willingness to help expedite that.

South Africa, Senegal and Uganda have avoided censuring Moscow over the conflict, while Egypt, Zambia and Comoros voted against Russia last year in a UN General Assembly resolution condemning Moscow's invasion.

Many African nations have long had close ties with Moscow, dating back to the Cold War when the Soviet Union supported their anti-colonial struggles.

Other peace plans

Speaking during Friday's news conference, Comoros President Azali Assoumani floated the idea of a "road map" to peace, prompting questions from Zelenskyy who sought a clarification and insisted he didn't want "any surprises" from their visit with Putin.

Chances for peace talks look dim as Ukraine and Russia take sharply different stands.

Ukraine demands that Russia withdraws its troops from all its occupied territories as a condition for peace talks.

The Kremlin, in turn, wants Ukraine to recognise the Crimean Peninsula, which Moscow illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014, as part of Russia and acknowledge other land gains it has made.

China presented its own peace plan at the end of February. Ukraine and its allies largely dismissed the plan, as the warring sides look no closer to a ceasefire.