African leaders arrive in Russia for summit
Some African leaders arrived in Russia for a summit with President Vladimir Putin as he seeks allies amid the fighting in Ukraine, while the Kremlin accused Western powers of “outrageous” efforts to pressure other African heads of state not to attend, AP reports.
Putin has billed the two-day summit that opens Thursday in St. Petersburg as a major event that would help bolster ties with a continent of 1.3 billion people that is increasingly assertive on the global stage.
“Today, Africa is asserting itself more and more confidently as one of the poles of the emerging multipolar world,” Putin said in a statement released by the Kremlin. “The forum will provide a further boost to our political and humanitarian partnership for many years to come.”
On Wednesday, Putin held one-on-one talks with Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, and said Russia will more than triple the number of Ethiopian students it hosts and cover their education costs.
Later in the day, Putin also met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, hailing their growing bilateral trade that accounts for about one third of Russia’s trade with Africa.
El-Sissi noted that Russia has been building Egypt’s first nuclear power plant and emphasized the “special character of relations” between the two countries. “I’m sure that the Russia-Africa summit will achieve significant results,” he said.
Africa’s 54 nations make up the largest voting bloc at the United Nations and have been more divided than any other region on General Assembly resolutions criticizing Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
It’s the second Russia-Africa summit since 2019. The number of heads of state attending shrank from 43 then to 17 now because of what the Kremlin described as crude Western pressure to discourage African nations from taking part.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov deplored “unconcealed brazen interference by the U.S., France and other states through their diplomatic missions in African countries, and attempts to put pressure on the leadership of these countries in order to prevent their active participation in the forum.”
