African leaders talk with Putin about peace plan; No visible progress

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted a group of African leaders on Saturday who traveled to Russia on a self-proclaimed “peace mission” after spending the day in Ukraine, but the meeting ended without any visible progress. .

The designation, comprised of seven African pioneers — the leaders of the Comoro Islands, Senegal, South Africa and Zambia, as well as Egypt's head of the state and emissaries from the Republic of the Congo and Uganda — were in Ukraine on Friday to try to end the nearly 16-month of war between neighboring European countries.

The leaders then traveled to St. Petersburg on Saturday to meet Putin, who was attending a business forum in Russia's second-largest city.

There were few details on the delegation's proposals.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after the three-hour meeting that the Africans' peace plan had 10 elements, but "was not formulated on paper."

"The harmony drive proposed by African nations is undeniably challenging to incorporate, hard to look at positions," said Kremlin representative Dmitry Peskov. However, "President Putin has shown interest in thinking about it," he added.

Russia claims it was forced to send troops to Ukraine because it was threatened by Ukraine's desire to join NATO and by US and Western European support for the country.

Speaking at the economic forum on Friday, Putin declared that the first Russian tactical nuclear weapons had been deployed in Belarus, describing the move as a deterrent against Western efforts to defeat Russia in Ukraine. Previously, it had said that the deployment would begin in July.

Asked if he could order the use of combat nuclear weapons in Ukraine, Putin said there was no need to, but noted that Moscow could use its nuclear arsenals in the event of a "threat to Russia's statehood."

"In that case, we will certainly use all the means available to the Russian state. There should be no doubt about it," he said.

The mission to Ukraine, the first of its sort by African pioneers, follows other harmony drives — like China's — and is particularly significant as Africa is reliant upon supplies of food and fertilizer from Russia and Ukraine. The war has prevented exports from one of the most important breadbaskets in the world.

"This conflict is negatively affecting Africa," South African President Cyril Ramaphosa told a news conference with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy and four other South African heads of state after a closed-door meeting on Friday.

Ramaphosa and the others acknowledged the intensity of the hostilities, but insisted that all wars must end and stressed their willingness to help speed up the process.

"I think the Ukrainians feel that they should fight and not give up. The road to peace is very hard," said the president, adding that "it is necessary to put an end to this conflict as soon as possible."

Many African nations have a relationship with the Kremlin dating back to the Cold War, when the Soviet Union backed its anti-colonial struggles.