Ramaphosa and Putin discuss war in phone call ahead of Zelensky’s visit to SA

President Cyril Ramaphosa had a telephone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, 21 April — days before Ukrainian President Volodymyr’s Zelensky’s visits South Africa on Thursday, 24 April.

In the call, Putin laid out Russia’s conditions for a peace deal with Ukraine, according to a statement from the Kremlin. Ramaphosa confirmed the call several hours later, but his spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, did not respond to a question from Daily Maverick about who had initiated the call. If it was Putin, this might raise the possibility that the Russian president was trying to pre-empt Zelensky’s meeting with Ramaphosa.

“In view of the willingness to contribute in the search for ways to peacefully resolve the Ukraine crisis displayed by the South African side, Vladimir Putin outlined Russia’s principled stance regarding the necessity to eliminate the root causes behind the conflict and ensure Russia’s security interests are respected,” according to the Kremlin statement.

Such language has usually been interpreted to refer to Putin’s demands that Ukraine must drop its ambition to join Nato, and could include other Russian conditions such as retaining possession of the 20% of territory it occupies in the east and southeast of Ukraine, and including Crimea.

According to a report in The Wall Street Journal this week, the Trump administration has presented Ukraine with a peace proposal that would require Ukraine to abandon its plans to join Nato and would include US recognition of Crimea as part of Russia. Ukraine is expected to respond at a meeting with US and European officials in London this week.

The Trump administration has threatened to end its mediation if Russia and Ukraine do not respond positively to its proposal. Apparently as a result of this pressure, on Monday Putin proposed bilateral talks with Ukraine, according to Reuters.

Zelensky did not respond directly to Putin’s proposal but emphasised in his nightly video address that Ukraine “was ready for any conversation” about a ceasefire that would stop Russian missile and artillery strikes on civilians.

Meanwhile, in a post on social media platform X on Tuesday, Ramaphosa said, “I had the pleasure to once again interact with Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin over a telephone call.

“We both affirmed the strong bilateral relations between our respective countries. We further committed to working together towards a peaceful resolution of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In this regard, South Africa will continue engaging all interested and affected parties, including the government of Ukraine on finding a path to peace.”

Pretoria has presented Zelensky’s visit — which has been in the making for more than six months — as primarily about seeking peace in the war, which has been raging since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

In a media briefing on 20 March, Magwenya said, “We see President Zelensky’s visit as a continuation of our efforts to try to bring about a peaceful resolution to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.”

He touted Ramaphosa’s ability to speak to both sides in the conflict, which he said only two or three other world leaders could do, and which even the US had been unable to do, until Trump.

It is not clear, though, what SA might be able to bring to the peace process, which the Trump administration seems to be running very much on its own terms.

Will Ramaphosa convey Putin’s “security interests” to Zelensky? Or will he call Putin after his meeting with Zelensky to insist that Russia respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, which South Africa endorsed in February when it voted for the “Path to Peace” resolution in the UN General Assembly?

The resolution mourned “the tragic loss of life throughout the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation” and reaffirmed the UN’s “commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognised borders”.

Abducted children

Ramaphosa and Zelensky are also expected to discuss what role, if any, there could be for South Africa to play in international negotiations for the return of the many Ukrainian children — estimated by Ukraine at about 20,000 — whom Russia abducted from occupied Ukrainian territory. Ukraine believes Russia did this to extinguish the Ukrainian identity of the children.

At a conference in Canada last year, which was part of Zelensky’s peace formula discussions, SA agreed to work with Qatar and the Vatican on the return of the children.

The meeting between Ramaphosa and Zelensky will also discuss bilateral issues and the improvement of relations between the two countries.

In March, Ukraine’s ambassador to South Africa, Liubov Abravitova, told the SABC that the main purpose of Zelensky’s visit was political dialogue.

“This will be the first visit of a Ukrainian president to SA since the reestablishment of Ukraine’s independence. We are looking forward [to] the launching of a bilateral, multisectoral dialogue and cooperation. We are pretty sure it will reflect South Africa’s goals in the G20,” she said.

Olexiy Haran, a research adviser at the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation and professor of comparative politics at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy, agreed with Abravitova that Ukraine and South Africa could work together to realise the aims put forward by South Africa during its presidency of the G20 this year.

He said he believed Ukraine would be happy for Zelensky to receive an invitation from Pretoria to attend the G20 summit in Johannesburg in November.

“Moreover, Ukraine is ready to participate in the working groups of G20, specifically groups on food security and also digitalisation.”

South Africa has invited several non-G20 members to participate in G20 meetings, though not Ukraine.

Haran added he believed Ukraine would be happy if the two countries established a joint trade and economic commission to further develop bilateral ties.

Oleg Ignatov, a Russia expert at the International Crisis Group, told Daily Maverick that he did not think South Africa had much of a role to play in the Russia-Ukraine peace process as it had no real interest in the outcome — unlike Europe, which had a direct security interest. On the other hand, South Africa could theoretically provide a platform for peace negotiations for the same reason.

He said that for Ukraine, Zelensky’s visit to SA was important to demonstrate to the rest of the continent that Ukraine had good relations with the biggest economy in sub-Saharan Africa as Africa was the most difficult continent for Ukraine.

Not only were many African countries non-aligned in Russia’s war against Ukraine — as were most Asian countries — but several African countries had good relations with Russia.

Ignatov saw Putin’s call to Ramaphosa as sending a message to the countries of the Global South more generally that Russia was not a warmonger and that it had only attacked Ukraine because its legitimate security interests had been ignored by the West. DM