SA’s leadership of G20 will not succeed ‘without engagement with Ukraine’, says ambassador

As South Africa prepares to take over the presidency of the G20 in December, Ukraine is hoping that Pretoria will invite President Volodymyr Zelensky to the G20 summit, which it hosts next year, to push for peace in his country.

Ukraine is also keenly awaiting an invitation from President Cyril Ramaphosa to Zelensky to visit South Africa even sooner than the summit.

“I’m confident that the success of South African leadership in the G20 will not be possible without engagement with Ukraine, without assisting  Ukraine to find a just and sustainable peace because Russian aggression has affected the different security issues of the globe and of the African continent,” said Ukraine’s ambassador to SA, Liubov Abravitova.

“And South Africa will need to face them during their presidency of the G20.”

Briefing journalists in Cape Town on the first 1,000 days of Russia’s war against her country, Abravitova said Zelensky should also have been invited to this year’s G20 summit which is taking place now in Rio de Janeiro.

“I don't see any reason why Ukraine shouldn’t be invited to the summit in Rio. And then if Ukraine is not invited, why Russia should be invited? The country that is attacking Ukraine for 1,000 days.

“We think that it is important for Ukraine to be present in different platforms during the leadership of South Africa in the G20 next year and we are prepared to be part of those who will be finding solutions, not of those who are making troubles, like the Russian Federation.”

She said a possible visit to SA by Zelensky was discussed when Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, visited SA last month.

Abravitova told Daily Maverick, “If there would be an invitation from the SA side, I am confident President Zelensky would consider to come.”

Read more: ​​Why South Africa should spend more money on the G20

The Trump effect

She told the briefing that Russia’s “terrible, irrational, genocidal, unprovoked” attack on Ukraine, the biggest war of aggression since the end of the Second World War, was a very serious challenge not only for Ukraine but also for the civilised world.

She noted that a major Russian missile attack just a few hours before on the Black Sea port city of Odesa — her home town — had killed about nine civilians.

The ability of the world to protect the legal frameworks of democracy and international law depended on whether the democracies of the world were ready to be “determined, reactive and quick” in supporting the Ukrainian peace formula, she said.

Abravitova was asked if there was a realistic prospect of Ukraine succeeding in its goal of expelling Russian forces from its territory, in the light of Russia’s steady military advances and Donald Trump becoming the next US president. He is widely expected to withdraw US military support for Ukraine to try to force it to sue for peace, which would probably mean ceding the territory which Russia now occupies.

Abravitova said the election of Trump “definitely will affect the way and the possibility of Ukraine to protect itself”. She added that Ukraine was nonetheless looking forward to working with the Trump government. Ukraine had been receiving the support of both houses of Congress from Republicans and Democrats alike and “I want to believe that we will continue to have this support further.”

Military support

Abravitova was clear that Ukraine could expel Russia if it was given the necessary military support. She noted that even after 1,000 days of aggression, Russia had been unable to conquer Ukraine and that over the last couple of months, Ukraine had been able not only to control the frontline but also to expand into the Kursk area in Russia.

But because military support from its allies had taken such a long time coming or had not come at all, Ukraine had not been able to drive Russia out of its territory. She said the delays in arming Ukraine had given Russia time to learn how to use new types of weapons and to forge military alliances with Iran and North Korea.

Read more: ‘Frozen trenches, burning steppes’ – Ukraine marks 1,000 days of war

Abravitova berated German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for initiating a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on 10 November, saying by doing so he had helped break the isolation of Putin that others had worked so hard to create. She said Scholz had become the second European leader to do that, following on from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Orbán has, however, been openly sympathetic to Putin, so the comparison was not flattering to Scholz.

Apparently referring to a reported recent call by Trump to Putin, Abravitova said, “Definitely all the attempts of the two leaders of these two important-for-Ukraine countries to talk to the Russian president and to find a solution for us are sensitive. We want to make sure that there are no talks about Ukraine without Ukraine.”

Peace initiatives

She said that Ukraine respected all other peace initiatives — such as the African leaders’ initiative, which had been led by Ramaphosa, and the China-Brazil peace plan — but ultimately they would have to be based on Ukraine’s peace formula.

Abravitova said Ukraine would hold its second peace summit based on that formula either by the end of the year or early next year and that unlike the first summit in Switzerland in June, it would include Russian representatives.

Daily Maverick asked her if she expected South Africa to attend the summit if Russia didn’t. Russia has already said it would not attend and the SA government has indicated it might not attend if Russia is not there.

Read more: Ukrainians alarmed by Pretoria’s support for ‘destructive’ China-Brazil peace plan

She said she hoped SA would attend and that it had attended the last of the nine thematic meetings Ukraine had held to prepare for the second summit. This was the meeting in Canada which addressed the return of prisoners of war and also the return of the thousands of Ukrainian children whom Russia had abducted in the territories it occupied and deported to Russia.

Ukraine has been holding a series of international meetings on Zelensky’s peace formula since June last year and SA has attended most of them. Abravitova said all the thematic meetings were aimed at drafting a roadmap to peace to present to Russia at the second summit and she suggested that sufficient international support for the roadmap might persuade Russia to attend. DM