Putin hosts African leaders as grain deal collapse threatens food security

President Vladimir Putin is hosting a summit with African leaders that’s intended to demonstrate Russia’s growing influence on the continent. Instead, it’s turning into a measure of the Kremlin’s diminishing power as his war in Ukraine drags on.

The two-day meeting starting Thursday in St. Petersburg takes place amid criticism in Africa of the impact on global food prices of Russia’s withdrawal from the Black Sea grain deal and attacks on Ukrainian port facilities. In contrast to the first Russia-Africa summit in 2019 when Putin met 43 African heads of state, the Kremlin said 17 are due to attend this time.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov blamed “unprecedented pressure” by the US and its allies for the low turn-out. Putin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov highlighted participation by lower-level officials representing 49 countries despite arm-twisting by Russia’s opponents.

“Putin is imitating the Soviet Union but Putin’s Russia isn’t the USSR — it doesn’t have the soft power or money to buy loyalty,” said Andrei Kolesnikov of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “His new friends in Africa are not proving reliable.”

The summit takes place 10 days after Russia ended the Ukraine grain-export deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey that had ensured safe passage of almost 33 million tons of crops via the Black Sea, helping to cool surging world food prices following Russia’s invasion.

It’s also Putin’s first in-person gathering with foreign leaders since the mutiny by Wagner mercenaries in June that posed the most serious challenge to his nearly quarter-century rule in Russia. The future of Wagner’s activities in Africa, which has given the Kremlin a low-cost instrument to wield influence on the continent, is also in question amid the political fallout from the revolt.

The collapse of the grain deal threatens to exacerbate food-security concerns in Africa, where almost half of nations import more than a third of their wheat from Ukraine and Russia, according to the International Centre for Migration Policy Development.

Russia had repeatedly threatened to quit the agreement, claiming commitments to facilitate exports of Russian grain and fertilisers weren’t being fulfilled. Despite its complaints, Russia is shipping record volumes of wheat and fertilizer exports are recovering to pre-war levels.

Egypt, whose president, Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, is attending the summit, criticised Russia’s withdrawal. A top Kenyan official labelled Putin’s decision a “stab on the back” for drought-afflicted African countries hit by rising food prices.

“We understand the importance of uninterrupted food supplies for the socio-economic development and political stability of the African states,” Putin said in an article on the Kremlin website. The Kremlin said Putin plans bilateral talks with all the African heads of state participating in the summit.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who’s due to meet with Putin on Saturday, has also previously highlighted the issue in talks with his Russian and Ukrainian counterparts. Ramaphosa, whose ruling African National Congress has close ties to Moscow dating back to Soviet support for the anti-Apartheid movement, called the summit a chance to “foster mutually beneficial cooperation” between Russia and Africa.

The Russian leader conceded last week that he can’t travel to South Africa for a meeting in August of Brics states, amid concerns over the risk of possible arrest for alleged war crimes in Ukraine under a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court. A peace initiative in Russia and Ukraine begun by a group of African leaders in June also appears to be going nowhere.

The limits of Russia’s reach is indicated by its Africa trade reaching only $18 billion in 2022, dwarfed by China’s $282 billion in commercial exchanges that year with African nations.

The St. Petersburg summit is important for the Kremlin despite the reduced attendance from African leaders, said Maria Snegovaya, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Showcasing their remaining ties with certain regions is of crucial importance to Putin just to demonstrate that, first of all, Russia is not isolated; it remains an important international player, a great power,” she said.

African leaders will be looking to impress on Putin the need to resume grain exports through the Black Sea, said Sanusha Naidu, a Cape Town-based political analyst with the Institute for Global Dialogue. “It is going to be problematic if this is just a summit that is mainly about Russia and not about Africa,” she said.

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