MOSCOW, Russia
Moscow’s war in Ukraine and its exit from a UN-brokered grain deal will loom over this week’s Russia-Africa summit, as Vladimir Putin tries to woo African leaders seeking economic relief amid signs the Kremlin may be ready to seriously address peace talks with Kyiv.
The Kremlin said on Wednesday
that just 17 African heads of state would be attending.
This is far fewer than at its
2019 conference or at similar summits held elsewhere, including a meeting in
December with Joe Biden that dozens of African leaders flew to Washington DC to
attend.
In an effort to exert Russia’s
influence in Africa, the Kremlin claimed on Wednesday the St Petersburg summit
was being undercut by western powers as it sought out diplomatic allies in its
standoff over Ukraine.
Asked about the low number of
attenders, Putin’s press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, said: “This is absolutely
blatant, brazen interference by the United States, France and other states
through their diplomatic missions in African countries and their attempts to
put pressure on the leadership of these countries in order to prevent their
active participation in the forum.”
Under sanctions from much of
the western world and driven into isolation, Russia has emphasised
its plans to court the global south, claiming the country’s future lies in Asia
and Africa, where projected growth will present extraordinary economic
opportunities.
But Putin’s promises in 2019
to increase trade with Africa to $40bn (£31bn) a year have come up far short.
Russia’s economic influence in African countries is still dwarfed by other
powers such as China and is being hampered by new western sanctions.
Alexandra Prokopenko, a
scholar at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin, said she did not
expect a breakthrough for the Kremlin at the summit.
“In Russia there is no clear strategy toward Africa or speaking more broadly toward the global south. It’s more situational: we’re not friends with the west any more, so we’ll look to the east,” she said, adding: “And there is a very bad vibe because of the grain deal.”
Russia’s military is targeting
grain infrastructure at Ukrainian port cities, after its decision to pull out
from a UN- brokered deal that allowed the export of grain and other products
from Ukraine through the Black Sea to markets, many of them in Africa. The deal
was devised to alleviate soaring global food prices, and Russia blamed its
collapse on the west blocking Russian exports of grain and fertilisers.
Nonetheless, some African
leaders, facing extraordinary pressures at home and fearing a possible civil
backlash cause by rising grain prices, have spoken out angrily over Russia’s
exit from the deal.
In a tweet last week, Korir
Sing’Oei, the head of Kenya’s foreign affairs ministry, said: “The decision by
Russia to exit the Black Sea grain initiative is a stab on the back at global
food security prices and disproportionately impacts countries in the Horn of
Africa already impacted by drought.”
In terms of tangibles, Russia
is likely to focus on food and fuel security in Africa and a range of other
niche services that can entice African elites to maintain closer ties to
Moscow.
Pauline Bax, the deputy
director of the Africa programme at the International Crisis Group thinktank,
said: “Grain and fuel supplies will be the main talking points at the summit,
Moscow doesn’t have much else to offer. It looks like Putin will give some
promises on grain supplies after he withdrew from the deal.”
Cameron Hudson, a senior
associate for the Africa programme of the Washington-based CSIS thinktank, also
said he expected Moscow to announce bilateral grain offers in an effort to
assuage the pressure on African leaders and also to find markets for Russia’s
stranded products.
Putin has suggested a scheme
to have Qatar pay to ship the grain to Turkey, where it could later be sent on
to poorer African countries. However, it is unclear whether the intermediary
countries would agree.
Some leaders such as South
Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, will come to the summit seeking to revive
a peace initiative they have previously delivered to both Putin and to
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
“We have seen African heads of
state take a much more public stand on trying to put forward possible peace
plans,” said Hudson, noting the serious economic pressures on African countries
brought on by the war and sanctions. “They’re going to come to this conference
looking not just for lip service, but to be taken seriously by Putin.”
Hudson said it was “really
make or break for Putin” because there could still be anger after his rejection
of a deal proposed by African leaders during a summit in Moscow last month. “He
essentially patted them on their heads and sent them home and said you don’t
understand what’s going on. I don’t think that sat particularly well with those
heads of state … there could be some difficult conversations,” Hudson said.
Nonetheless, Russia did have
advantages in Africa, said Hudson, including a long history of wooing local
elites and a popular message in portraying Moscow as an anti-imperialist force
resisting the west, despite Russia’s own imperialist history.
Unlikely to be discussed
publicly is the role of the Wagner mercenary group, which is most active in
Central African Republic, Libya, Mali and Sudan. The group is popular with some
leaders because it can be wielded flexibly with little oversight, including for
its brutal methods. The Kremlin has pledged that it will not reduce Wagner’s
activities in Africa even after the mercenary group’s leader, Yevgeny
Prigozhin, launched an abortive mutiny in Russia last month.
Before the summit, Prigozhin
gave a rare live interview with the pro-Kremlin television channel Afrique
Média, which targets French-speaking African countries. “There was no, and
there will be no, reduction in our programmes in Africa,” he said.
Those interests are likely to
be overshadowed by economic concerns and the Kremlin still looks to be managing
expectations before the diminished conference.
Ivan Kłyszcz, an expert on
Russia-Africa relations at the ICDS thinktank in Tallinn, said: “While the
summit is getting some attention in Russia, it looks like Russian officials are
careful not to oversell it. Early signs indicate that the summit will be
underwhelming and state media has been somewhat adjusting its framing of this
event. They cannot sell it as big of a success as 2019.”
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