(Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin will discuss Ukraine with a group of African leaders in a working dinner at a summit in St Petersburg on July 28, Russian news agencies quoted Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yury Ushakov as saying on Tuesday.
Ushakov told Russian media that 17 African heads of state would speak at the Russia-Africa summit, which takes place this Thursday and Friday, the agencies said.
He also said South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who “plays a crucial role in advancing the Africans’ initiatives”, would hold a bilateral meeting with Putin the day after the multilateral summit, on Saturday.
Last month, Ramaphosa visited Putin in St Petersburg with leaders from Senegal, Egypt, Zambia, Uganda, Congo Republic and the Comoros to present a peace plan for Ukraine.
But Putin gave the leaders a list of reasons why he believed many of their proposals were misguided, pouring cold water on a plan already largely dismissed by Kyiv.
Since then, Africa’s fears about the war have become more urgent. Last week, Moscow quit a deal allowing Ukraine, one of the world’s leading grain exporters alongside Russia, to ship grain safely out of its ports on the Black Sea despite the war, which Moscow calls a “special military operation”.
The resulting shock to world grain prices has been exacerbated by Russian attacks on those seaports and on the Ukrainian ports on the River Danube that have been taking up some of the slack, threatening to cause shortages in parts of Africa that depend on imported grain.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said it was “especially devastating for vulnerable countries struggling to feed their people”.
Moscow has suggested that it can help Africa with both commercial and free shipments of Russian grain as Putin, a pariah in the West for invading Ukraine, seeks to reinforce ties with countries farther afield.
(Reporting by Felix Light; Editing by Kevin Liffey and Alison Williams)
