- “This draft agreement was initialed by the head of the Kiev negotiation team. He put his signature there. Here it is,” the Russian president said
- Lavrov also pointed out that African countries have shown an understanding of the root causes of the Ukraine crisis, “which was created by the West’s efforts”
Russian President Vladimir Putin showed the initialed draft agreement with Ukraine, which was drawn up in March 2022 in Istanbul, to leaders and representatives of several African countries at their meeting on Saturday.
This is just as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after Russian President Putin’s meeting with the African peace mission that African countries stand for the indivisibility of global security, and Russia backs this principled position.
The Russian President , showing the paper to the African delegation, told them: “I would like to draw your attention to the fact that with [Turkish] President [Tayyip] Erdogan’s assistance, as you know, a string of talks between Russia and Ukraine took place in Turkey so as to work out both the confidence-building measures you mentioned, and to draw up the text of the agreement.
“We did not discuss with the Ukrainian side that this treaty would be classified, but we have never presented it, nor commented on it. This draft agreement was initialed by the head of the Kiev negotiation team. He put his signature there. Here it is.”
Lavrov said: “First of all, they (African countries) highlighted China’s well-known twelve points, which were presented a couple of months ago, and they highlighted those parts of that Chinese initiative that are close to them and that stipulate that there no double standards in the world, that all the principles of the UN Charter in their integrity and correlation are respected and implemented, that there are no unilateral sanctions, that there are no attempts to ensure someone’s security at the expense of others, that security is indivisible on a global scale. They are the principled attitudes that we share.”
Lavrov also pointed out that African countries have shown an understanding of the root causes of the Ukraine crisis, “which was created by the West’s efforts.
“They have shown an understanding that this situation has to be resolved by grappling with those root causes, by working out specific real actions to eliminate the causes that are undermining and have been undermining fair security in Europe throughout many years.”
The African peace mission has brought together South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, President of the Comoros Azali Assoumani, Senegal’s President Macky Sall, Zambia’s President Hakainde Hichilema, as well as Egypt’s Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly and Florent Ntsiba and Ruhakana Rugunda, special envoys of the presidents of the Republic of the Congo and Uganda respectively.
On June 16, the mission visited Kiev, where they held talks with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. On June 17, the African delegation held a meeting with Putin in St. Petersburg, where they outlined their initiative.
