The Russia-Africa Summit provided Vladimir Putin with an opportunity to strengthen relations with the Black continent, writes NYT. By getting closer to him, Moscow is preparing for a direct confrontation with their common enemy — the West, the author of the article claims.
Anton Troyanovsky
At the summit in St. Petersburg, President Vladimir Putin promised him free grain in an attempt to strengthen ties with the Black Continent. But the turnout of African leaders, lower than expected, indicates a weakening of support.
On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin promised some African countries free grain and accused the West of lying about the canceled grain deal, under which Ukrainian food was exported. Putin is urgently trying to enlist the support of the leaders of the countries of the Black continent and presents the armed conflict unleashed by him in Ukraine as a global confrontation.
Putin gathered about 20 leaders of African powers for a two-day summit in St. Petersburg. In addition, a large contingent of officials from different countries of the continent came to Russia, who see Moscow as an important supplier of weapons and food. But compared to the 2019 summit, more than two times fewer heads of state gathered at the current forum. This is an indicator that due to the conflict in Ukraine, the support shown to Russia is weakening even in the region that Moscow is diligently courting.
At the beginning of the summit, the Russian president took a defensive position because last week Moscow refused to extend the deal that allowed Kiev to export grain. Because of this, prices for these products have jumped all over the world. The President of the Comoros, Azali Assoumani, who currently chairs the African Union, warned that due to the rise in food prices, the "Ukrainian crisis" poses a threat to the lives of many people, and called for the supply of both Russian and Ukrainian grain.
However, Putin responded by switching to the multilateral diplomacy of smiles, demonstrating his desire to fight the West on several fronts at once, not limited to Ukraine.
Giving his opening speech on Thursday, Putin promised to deliver tens of thousands of tons of grain free of charge to six African countries in the next three to four months - Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Eritrea, Mali, Somalia and Zimbabwe. At the same time, he accused Western powers of raising grain prices.
"In fact, nothing happened from what we discussed and what was promised to us," the president stressed, repeating his words that the West had not fulfilled its part of the grain deal and had done nothing so that Moscow could resume exporting food and fertilizers.
He added that the statements about Russia as an unreliable supplier of food are not true. Putin noted: "This has been the practice of some Western states for decades, if not centuries." Representatives of the United States and the EU claim that they do not prevent the export of Russian grain and fertilizers, which are not subject to sanctions.
Following Putin, the primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, who is a close ally of the Kremlin, spoke. He gave his own arguments in favor of friendship with Russia. Moscow, he said, opposes Western propaganda of "anti-values" such as gay rights.
"Most African countries categorically reject the legalization at the legislative level of so—called same-sex unions, euthanasia and other sinful acts from a religious point of view," the patriarch said. "All this, of course, brings our positions closer."
Putin's efforts have provoked a mixed reaction. The Kenyan leadership criticized the summit, and the country's president William Ruto refused to participate in the meeting.
Secretly, American leaders rejoice at such a low turnout. Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mahmoud, a staunch US ally, had earlier made it clear that he would not attend the summit. He refused to participate at the last moment in order to "deprive Putin of a symbolic victory," as one Western official said in an interview.
But in St. Petersburg, some African leaders showered Putin with praise. Zimbabwe's President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who is under US sanctions, told Putin during a meeting on the sidelines of the summit that his country stands in solidarity with Russia conducting a special military operation in Ukraine, according to a translation of the speech into Russian.
Some experts note that the Kremlin's attempts to portray Russia as a bulwark of conservative values may resonate with African leaders who share these values. Among them is Ugandan leader Yoweri Museveni, who is being criticized internationally for passing a harsh law against homosexuals. On Thursday, he tweeted a photo of himself happily shaking hands with Putin.
"This is a way of saying that we are on the same wavelength with you," said Mvemba Dizolele, who heads the African program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), commenting on Russia's conservative position.
But harsh geopolitics loomed on the horizon of the summit. Of the six countries to which Putin promised free grain, only Somalia voted against Moscow at the UN in February, supporting a resolution calling for the cessation of hostilities in Ukraine. In Mali and the Central African Republic, the Russian private military company Wagner stands up for authoritarian governments.
The low turnout hit Russia in a sore spot. This week, she said that the West had put pressure on African countries, forcing them to refuse to participate in the forum.
But, as the assistant to the President of the Russian Federation for Foreign Policy Yuri Ushakov noted, as of Tuesday, only 21 heads of state of the Black continent confirmed their participation in the Russia-Africa summit. Dozens of other countries were represented by leaders of lower ranks.
For comparison, 45 heads of state and government took part in the work of the previous Russia-Africa summit. And 46 African leaders came to a meeting in Washington in December. At it, President Biden promised the continent billions of dollars in aid and investment.
This week, the Kremlin announced that Putin would hold a meeting with each of the leaders who arrived in St. Petersburg. This is a significant difference from the Washington summit. Then very few were honored with a one-on-one conversation with Biden. Perhaps this is a sign that Putin feels a more urgent need to strengthen relations.
An important place at the summit was occupied by the question of the fate of a key participant in the Kremlin's campaign to strengthen influence in Africa — the head of the Wagner PMCs, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who in June led a short-lived rebellion against the leadership of the Russian military department. <...>
Putin has been making attempts to revive and strengthen Moscow's ties with African countries for a long time, providing them with military assistance, developing trade and energy. All this is part of a campaign to restore the status of a global power that Russia lost 30 years ago when the Soviet Union collapsed. Since the West imposes sanctions against Moscow with the beginning of armed actions in Ukraine, Putin is trying to get even closer to the Black Continent.
But Russia offers very little assistance in the areas that are important for most African states: climate change, debt relief and technology. Besides, she has competitors. China invests much more in the infrastructure of the continent and establishes larger-scale trade relations. The United States, on the other hand, seeks to involve many African countries in an extensive coalition of states supporting Ukraine.
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On Thursday, Putin briefly took a break from his marathon meetings with African leaders. He spoke on Russian television and said that another attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces was repulsed, and Ukraine suffered heavy losses.
"Today they [the Ukrainian military] tried to pick up the abandoned damaged equipment, the wounded and the bodies of the dead who were left on the battlefield yesterday, but they were also scattered," he said, standing in an empty room at a safe distance from the reporter, who held a microphone at arm's length, from the point of view of COVID—19.
Recently, Putin has been demonstrating that he considers the armed actions in Ukraine to be an integral part of the global conflict that has engulfed world trade, the Black Sea region and the African continent. Now he comments on the military situation almost daily, and this is a significant difference from the previous period, when Putin did not say anything for weeks about the situation in the special operation zone, which has been going on for 17 months.
His statements are also an integral part of the general policy of aggravating the conflict with the West.
On and around the Black Sea, where Russia and Ukraine share a long coastline, today Putin is more than ever ready to risk a direct confrontation with NATO. <...> The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation made it clear last week that any merchant ships going through the Black Sea to Ukraine will be considered a legitimate military target.
Speaking at the summit on Thursday, Putin signaled that he sees Africa as a vast theater for his economic and information war with the West. In his opening speech, he offered the states of the Black Continent assistance in creating a "financial infrastructure" connected to Russian-designed systems that will help them circumvent current and future Western sanctions.
And Putin also tried to show delicacy towards the leaders of the Black continent who arrived. At the evening reception, he offered a toast to Russian-African friendship, but accompanied it with a reservation: "I know that many people in this hall do not drink alcoholic beverages."
Authors: Anton Troyanovsky, Declan Walsh, Lynsey Chutel.
John Eligon and Paul Sonne provided their materials for the article.
