Zelenskyy asks African leaders to push Russia on prisoners

“Would you please ask Russia to liberate the political prisoners?” Zelenskyy said. “Maybe this will be an important result of your mission, of your ‘road map’.”

Lusaka, June 17 – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged a group of African leaders to ask his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to free political prisoners from Crimea and beyond, saying it would be an “important step” during their trip to Russia on Saturday.

Seven African leaders – the Presidents of Comoros, Senegal, South Africa and Zambia, as well as Egypt’s Prime Minister and top envoys from the Republic of Congo and Uganda – visited Ukraine on Friday as part of a self-styled “peace mission” to both Ukraine and Russia to try to help end their nearly 16-month-old war.

On Saturday, the African leaders will travel to meet Putin in the Russian city of St Petersburg.

The mission to Ukraine, the first of its kind by African leaders, comes in the wake of other peace initiatives such as one by China.

*South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin visit a site of a mass grave, in the town of Bucha [Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters]*

“This conflict is affecting Africa negatively,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said at a news conference alongside Zelenskyy and the four other African heads of state or government, after the leaders met for closed-door talks on Friday afternoon.

The trip is seen as a crucial one as many African nations, to varying degrees, rely on food and fertiliser deliveries from Russia and Ukraine, whose war has jeopardised and impeded exports from one of the world’s most important breadbaskets.

“I do believe that Ukrainians feel that they must fight and not give up. The road to peace is very hard,” Ramaphosa added.

“Today, we even told President Zelenskyy that we not only recognise their [Ukrainians’] viewpoint, but we also respect how they feel about the war that’s going on. But we also said there is a need to bring this conflict to an end sooner rather than later.”

Zelenskyy told reporters after the meeting with the delegation of African leaders, “I clearly said several times at our meeting that to allow any negotiations with Russia now that the occupier is on our land is to freeze the war, to freeze pain and suffering.”

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He also said that peace talks with Russia would be possible only after Moscow withdraws its forces from occupied Ukrainian territory.

“We need real peace, and therefore, a real withdrawal of Russian troops from our entire independent land.”

◾Liberate prisoners

The mood of the news conference became tense when Comoros President Azali Assoumani floated the idea of a “road map” to peace, prompting questions from Zelenskyy who sought a clarification and insisted he did not want “any surprises” from their visit with Putin.

Zelenskyy then urged them to help free political prisoners from Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.

“Would you please ask Russia to liberate the political prisoners?” Zelenskyy said. “Maybe this will be an important result of your mission, of your ‘road map’.”

◾Prospective peace plan

The peace mission could propose a series of “confidence-building measures” during initial efforts at mediation, according to a draft framework document seen by the Reuters news agency.

The document stated that the objective of the mission is “to promote the importance of peace and to encourage the parties to agree to a diplomacy-led process of negotiations”.

Its measures could include a Russian pullback, removal of tactical nuclear weapons from Belarus and suspension of the implementation of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant targeting Putin.