Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen on a phone screen as he attends a joint statement with President of Comoros Azali Assoumani at the Russia Africa Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, July 28, 2023.
Pavel Bednyakov/AP
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Pavel Bednyakov/AP
Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen on a phone screen as he attends a joint statement with President of Comoros Azali Assoumani at the Russia Africa Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, July 28, 2023.
Pavel Bednyakov/AP
NAIROBI, Kenya — African leaders are leaving two days of meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin with little to show for their requests to resume a deal that kept grain flowing from Ukraine and to find a path to end the war there.
Putin in a press conference late Saturday following the Russia-Africa summit said Russia’s termination of the grain deal earlier this month caused a rise in grain prices that benefits Russian companies. He added that Moscow would share some of those revenues with the “poorest nations.”
That commitment, with no details, follows Putin’s promise to start shipping 25,000 to 50,000 tons of grain for free to each of six African nations in the next three to four months — an amount dwarfed by the 725,000 tons shipped by the U.N. World Food Program to several hungry countries, African and otherwise, under the