By Mogomotsi Magome, PRETORIA
South Africa
Russia was willing to negotiate with Ukraine in the early months of the war, but the United States and other Western nations advised Kyiv against holding talks, Moscow’s top diplomat said Monday.
Russian Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov’s remarks on a visit to South Africa were similar to those made
last year by President Vladimir Putin. The U.S. and other Western nations have
said that Russia isn’t serious about hammering out a deal to end the nearly
year-long war, which began on Feb. 24.
“It is well known that we
supported the proposal of the Ukrainian side to negotiate early in the special
military operation and by the end of March, the two delegations agreed on the
principle to settle this conflict,” Lavrov said.
“It is well known and was
published openly that our American, British, and some European colleagues told
Ukraine that it is too early to deal, and the arrangement which was almost
agreed was never revisited by the Kyiv regime.”
Russia
has repeatedly rejected Ukrainian and Western demands that it withdraw
completely from Ukraine as a condition for any negotiations. U.S.
President Joe Biden has indicated he would be willing to talk with Putin, if
the Russian leader demonstrated that he seriously wanted to end the invasion.
Lavrov is in Pretoria for talks with South African counterpart Naledi Pandor as Russia pushes to strengthen ties with Africa’s most developed country and an historical ally amid the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.
South Africa was seen as the
most significant of several African nations to take a neutral stance on the war
and refuse to condemn Russia’s invasion — to the disappointment of the U.S. and
other Western partners who also view South Africa as pivotal to their plans to
build relationships in Africa.
Lavrov met with Pandor in the
South African capital and is expected to visit other African countries on his
trip. It’s the Russian minister’s second visit to Africa in the space of six
months as Moscow seeks to rally support.
Russia’s war in Ukraine and
its impact on Africa’s 1.3 billion people, which includes rising oil and food
prices, was expected to take center stage during Lavrov’s talks with Pandor.
“We are fully alert that
conflict, wherever it exists in the world, impacts negatively on all of us, and
as the developing world it impacts on us particularly as the African
continent,” Pandor said before the talks. “This is why as South Africa we
consistently articulate that we will always stand ready to support the peaceful
resolution of conflicts in the continent and throughout the globe.”
Lavrov repeated a claim that
he’s made before that the West was responsible for the surge in global food
prices.
South Africa continues to keep
strong bonds with Russia following the Soviet Union’s support for the country’s
current ruling party, the African National Congress, when it was a liberation
movement fighting to end the apartheid system of repression against South
Africa’s Black majority.
That relationship is largely
what led South Africa to abstain from a U.N. vote last year condemning Russia’s
actions in Ukraine, although a small group of people protested against Russia and
its full-scale invasion of Ukraine outside the building where Lavrov and Pandor
held talks.
Despite South Africa’s
expressed neutrality over Ukraine, Lavrov’s visit comes days after the South
African armed forces announced they would hold
joint drills with the Russian and Chinese navies off South Africa’s
eastern coast next month, bringing Russian and Chinese warships across the
Indian Ocean.
On Monday, Lavrov insisted
that the naval exercises would be “transparent” and follow international law.
“Three sovereign countries
will hold drills without violating international law, and I don’t understand
with whom this can cause a mixed reaction,” Lavrov was quoted as saying by
Russian state news agency Tass.
Lavrov visited Ethiopia,
Egypt, Uganda and the Republic of Congo on his African tour last year. That was
closely followed by a visit to South Africa by U.S. Secretary of State Antony
Blinken, a move seen as a bid by Washington to counter expanding
Russian influence in a strategically important continent.
This time, U.S.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will start an official visit to South
Africa on Wednesday following stops in Senegal and Zambia.
Yellin’s arrival in South
Africa comes on the same day that a second U.S. Cabinet minister, U.S.
Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield, arrives in Ghana at
the start of a three-nation African trip that will also include Mozambique and
Kenya.
Biden announced at the end of
a U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in December that he will visit sub-Saharan Africa
in 2023, the first trip to the region by a U.S. leader in a decade.
The summit and high-level U.S.
visits are aimed at strengthening U.S. relations with Africa, where China has
surpassed the U.S. in trade and is aiming to increase its military presence,
and Russia has military ties with the authorities in Mali and Central African
Republic. - AP
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