The President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Wednesday expressed interest in strengthening the relationship between Ukraine and African nations, pointing out that six African leaders who visited the country earlier this year left with different impressions about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Speaking yesterday during a meeting with a group of African journalists in Kyiv, the capital city of Ukraine, Zelenskyy said the leaders saw firsthand the level of damage done to his country by Russia, the consequences of war on children and adults, and left the country with the understanding that it was Russia fighting Ukraine and not the other way around.
He stated further that the ongoing war in Gaza cannot be compared with the Russia-Ukraine war that has lasted 21 months, because the world has always known that the tension between Israel and Hamas would escalate someday.
‘Ukraine is in a full-scale war with Russia, it is a war on one state by another, unprovoked,’ alluding to Hamas’ attack on Israel that led to the recent tragedy that has gone on for six weeks now.
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Acknowledging that the loss of lives anywhere in the world is a tragedy, he accused Russia and Iran of benefitting from the war in Gaza. ‘Everyone knows of the conflict but few are interested in stopping it for good. You can see that Russia and its allies’ in Iran are involved in it.’
He added that Russia is consistently devising ways of distracting the world from its operations in Ukraine and it does this by fomenting unrest in different parts of the world including the use of Wagner Group in Africa.
The Russia-Ukraine war which started on the 24th February 2022 has seen the displacement of about 3.6 million people according to IOM tracking matrix and led to the death of over 9,000.
Zelenskyy, however, reiterated his readiness to visit African nations to strengthen relationships, especially on easy movement of grains. He said he would be glad to receive proposals from African nations on how to achieve direct supply of grains and eliminate third party.
Speaking on the difficulties in exporting Ukraine agricultural products due to Russia’s blockade of the Black Sea, he expressed delight that the country currently uses a parallel export corridor, which might be longer but manageable.