hadhwanaag
Ukrainian Foreign
Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Wednesday that talks about resolving the
conflict with Russia could not start with a mere cessation of hostilities.
"If anyone thinks they
should freeze the conflict and then see how to solve it, they don’t understand
it,” he said in an online briefing aimed at African journalists, following a
tour of African countries.
More than 100 rounds of
consultation and attempts at a cease-fire since Russia's annexation of Crimea
from Ukraine in 2014 only led to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February
2022, he said.
A delegation of African
heads of state is expected to visit Ukraine and Russia in the next few days,
hoping to persuade them to cease hostilities, a spokesperson for South African
President Cyril Ramaphosa told Reuters last month.
He said on Wednesday
that no date had been set for the mission.
Such a proposal means
that Russian troops would remain on Ukrainian soil even as peace talks start.
Ukraine previously said Russian forces should withdraw before such negotiations
could start, while Moscow wants Kyiv to recognize Russian sovereignty over
Crimea as a precondition for negotiations.
President Macky Sall of
Senegal, last year’s African Union chairman, whose country was not present at
the latest U.N. vote condemning Russia in February, leads the initiative. The
current African Union chairman, Comoros Islands President Othman Ghazali, was
recently added to the delegation.
It also includes
Presidents Abdel Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt and Hakainde Hichilema of Zambia —
which both voted for the resolution — and Congo Republic's Denis Sassou Nguesso
and Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, which both abstained, as did South Africa.
Kuleba has been on a
charm offensive in Africa to win support on a continent where 30 of the 54
African U.N. member states voted in favor of the U.N. resolution condemning
Russia’s invasion.
"What we see in our
relations with the continent right now is fair to call a Ukrainian-African
renaissance,” Kuleba said.
He had no details on
what the African peace mission entailed, but he welcomed it.
"We are looking forward
to hosting these presidents in Kyiv,” he said.
VOA
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