South Africa is impressed with Ukraine-Russia peace mission despite Kiev’s criticism
Russian President Vladimir Putin said after meetings with his African counterparts that Russia is not giving up negotiations to seek a peaceful solution to the conflict in Ukraine.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said Sunday that the African mediation mission between Russia and Ukraine was impressive, but its success should be measured against the goal of stopping the war between the two countries. At the same time, Kiev did not make much progress with the meeting it held with the African representatives, as the mission’s aspiration to bring about negotiations without demanding Russian withdrawal is doomed to failure.
The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, made it clear once again that allowing any negotiations with Russia means freezing the war, freezing the pain and suffering. In that sense, he reiterated that it is necessary for the Russians to withdraw from all Ukrainian territories in order to sit down with them to negotiate peace.
The Ukrainian president attended some of the meetings with African leaders with an impatient and sometimes disgruntled gesture. He even reproached the terminology they used to refer to the invasion initiated by Russia since last year. “My colleagues keep constantly calling this war a crisis, and they are within their rights to do so, but this means that we assess the situation differently. It is not a crisis and it is not a threat, it is a war whose consequences are a series of major crises,” Zelenski said.
The South African head of state said that, obviously, a real success will be measured by the ultimate goal of stopping the war. “But the impact it has had is, one: we were heard, as we gave an African perspective on the war that is having negative consequences for our continent,” the head of state explained.
For his part, Russian President Vladimir Putin said after the meetings with his African counterparts that Russia is not giving up negotiations to seek a peaceful solution to the conflict in Ukraine. “Dear friends, it was not us, but the Ukrainian leadership who announced that they will not conduct any negotiations (…) We are ready to study all your proposals,” said the head of the Kremlin during the meeting held in the Constantine Palace in St. Petersburg.
With information from EFE