[AP Via Hot Air] On Friday, we discussed the African peace envoy mission to Ukraine and Russia where the leaders of seven nations sought to bring an end to the fighting. The meeting with Zelensky went well enough because Ukraine obviously has the greatest incentive to see the hostilities cease. The subsequent meeting with Vladimir Putin by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and the rest of the envoys was also reportedly friendly in nature, but it produced essentially nothing in terms of solid results or a workable path to peace. The African delegation raised understandable complaints about the negative impact the war is having on their continent, but according to a Kremlin spokesman, the African proposal was lacking in details and does not address "the main elements of our position." But the meeting may still have been useful because Russia appeared to reveal what those "main elements" of its position are. (AP)Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday met with a group of leaders of African countries who traveled to Russia on a self-styled "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.
There is no arguing with the main complaints being raised by the African delegation. The war in Ukraine is impacting the continent’s ability to obtain the grain and fertilizer that is needed, particularly when Africa is facing both drought and rampant energy shortages. So ending the war would clearly work in their favor. But the proposal they brought to Moscow was described as being "thin." The plan supposedly consists of ten elements, but Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the proposal "was not formulated on paper."