South Africa Offers to Host Zelensky-Putin Talks

President Volodymyr Zelensky met with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in New York on Wednesday, after the leader of the BRICS member nation offered to host talks between Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Their discussion followed Zelensky’s address to the UN General Assembly, in which he emphasized that international institutions alone are unable to protect countries from aggression. 

In a post on Telegram, Zelensky announced that the meeting had taken place.

The president said that he had told Ramaphosa that Russia is now intensifying its drone strikes on civilian targets and briefed him on the situation on the front lines.

“I stressed that, unlike Russia, Ukraine is ready for a meeting at the leadership level without any preconditions,” Zelensky added.

According to the president’s office, the two leaders agreed that any such meeting should take place in a third country, with Ramaphosa offering to host bilateral talks between Zelensky and Putin in South Africa.

South Africa, like Russia, is a member of BRICS – a loose economic and political alignment of developing nations which also includes India, China, and Brazil.

However, South Africa has not aligned itself with Russia on its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

In 2023, the South African government told Putin that he would be arrested if he attended a planned BRICS summit in Johannesburg.

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He added that Nawrocki is creating hostility towards Ukrainians for his own political gain, drawing a comparison with the former Hungarian prime minister.

South Africa is a signatory to the International Criminal Court (ICC), which had issued an arrest warrant for Putin earlier that year in connection with the abduction and transfer of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia.

Hungary is also an ICC member, but said the same year that they would not uphold the arrest warrant on Putin. 

Zelensky has consistently offered to meet Putin for talks, whereas the Russian leader has prevaricated. On Aug. 18, he reportedly proposed Moscow as a venue for talks – an offer that Zelensky could not possibly accept. 

“I thank Cyril Ramaphosa for South Africa’s readiness to host such a meeting and for the country’s involvement in the peace process,” Zelensky said.