Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday rejected the offer of mediation presented to him by a delegation of African presidents, denouncing a “deception” by Moscow in the midst of a counter-offensive by Ukrainian forces.
The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, in its daily update, has also stressed that if the Ukrainian army came up against the air superiority and the firepower of the Russians, it obtained “tactical successes” in the south.
“Allowing negotiation with Russia now, when the occupier is on our land, means freezing war, freezing pain and suffering,” Volodymyr Zelensky said at a joint press conference with African leaders.
“It is clear that Russia is trying to use its old deception tactics again. But Russia will no longer succeed in deceiving the world,” he added. “We are not going to give him a second chance.”
The delegation led to kyiv by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa had offered to mediate before going to Russia.
“There must be a de-escalation on both sides,” Ramaphosa said.
From St. Petersburg, Vladimir Putin for his part assured that the Ukrainian counter-offensive had “no chance” of succeeding, and that Western countries would be forced to return to him, on his terms.
“And we’ll see when and what we can talk to them about,” he said.
The African delegation had arrived in kyiv in the morning. Shortly after, the capital region was targeted by a Russian missile attack which triggered anti-aircraft sirens followed by explosions, and injured at least seven people according to Ukrainian police.
France condemned in the evening the bombings which “constitute war crimes and cannot go unpunished”.
After kyiv, the African mediation must head for Russia, where it must meet Vladimir Putin on Saturday in Saint Petersburg (north-west).
It includes four presidents – Cyril Ramaphosa (South Africa), Macky Sall (Senegal) and Hakainde Hichilema (Zambia), as well as Azali Assoumani (Comoros), who heads the African Union – and representatives from Congo, Uganda and Egypt.
She had started her stage in Ukraine with a visit to Boutcha, this suburb of kyiv where the Russian army is accused of having massacred civilians.
NATO welcomed this mediation during the day, while warning that only a “just” solution recognizing Russian aggression would work.
The Ukrainian Air Force said in the morning that it had shot down 12 Russian missiles, including six hypersonic Kinjals, over the capital region. Missile shrapnel injured seven people, including two children, near kyiv, police said.
The head of Ukrainian diplomacy immediately qualified these Russian strikes as a “message to Africa”. “Russia wants more war, not peace,” Dmytro Kouleba tweeted.
“What happened today” shows African leaders “how sincere Putin is about ending the conflict” and the consideration he has for “all international efforts to stop this conflict”, has commented in the same vein in Brussels Peter Stano, spokesman for the head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell.
At the same time, Mr. Putin announced on Friday that he had transferred the first nuclear weapons to Belarus, concretizing the deployment announced in March by Moscow.
He lambasted Ukraine for a long time, repeating his desire to “denazify” it, and going so far as to qualify, by claiming to quote his many “Jewish friends”, Volodymyr Zelensky as “shame for the Jewish people”.
As for the counter-offensive underway for ten days in the south, “the Ukrainian armed forces have no chance there, nor in other areas”, he assured.
Moscow keeps hammering that Ukraine’s ongoing offensive on the positions occupied by the Russians is a failure. kyiv, for its part, claims to have liberated a handful of localities and a hundred square kilometers, mainly on the southern front.
“Ukrainian forces continue to conduct both offensive and defensive operations with relative success,” Ganna Maliar, deputy defense minister, said on Friday evening. In Bakhmout in particular, this eastern city which has been the subject of a fierce battle, “our troops are carrying out offensives, taking commanding heights and wooded areas to gradually repel the enemy”, she said. said.
In the south, “our units are achieving tactical success in virtually every area and direction they advance,” she added.
The Ukrainian soldiers notably claimed to have shot down a Ka-52 combat helicopter of the Russian forces.
All information impossible to verify from an independent source under the conditions of the war.
According to military analysts, Ukraine has not yet launched the bulk of its forces in its counter-offensive, and is still currently testing the front to determine the weak points of the Russian defense.
“Glory to Ukraine! We will defeat them all!”, Volodymyr Zelensky said in a message addressed to the military on Telegram in the evening.
The African peace mediation, whose launch Pretoria announced last month, is in fact taking place in the midst of the intensification of fighting on the front and Russian bombardments of Ukrainian cities.
Africa is hard hit by rising food prices and the effects of war on world trade. But South Africa, refusing to condemn Russia for its aggression, is criticized for its proximity to the Kremlin.
Russia, for its part, is trying to attract African leaders to its camp by claiming to stand up as a bulwark against imperialism and by accusing the West of blocking with its sanctions the exports of Russian cereals and fertilizers essential to the Africa.
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16/06/2023 22:52:05 – Kiev (Ukraine) (AFP) © 2023 AFP