Putin Hosts African Leaders As Grain Deal Collapse Threatens Food Security

(Bloomberg) -- 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 that began 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.

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. 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.

“We are confronting a food crisis which is partly caused by the war between Russia and Ukraine,” the head of the African Union’s executive arm, Chadian politician Moussa Faki Mahamat, told Putin at a round-table meeting Thursday. “Africa is suffering negative consequences from this conflict.” 

Russia “remains a reliable supplier of food supplies to Africa,” Putin said at the meeting. He later told a plenary session of the summit that Russia is ready to send 25,000 to 50,000 tons of grain for free to Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Mali, Somalia, Central African Republic and Eritrea in the next three to four months.

Wheat futures climbed Thursday as Ukraine said Russia fired two Kalibr cruise missiles at port infrastructure in the Odesa region, damaging equipment at a cargo terminal and increasing concerns over Black Sea grain supplies.

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.

What End of Ukraine Grain Export Deal Means for World: QuickTake

Russia had repeatedly threatened to quit the agreement, claiming commitments to facilitate exports of Russian grain and fertilizers 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, criticized Russia’s withdrawal. A top Kenyan official labeled Putin’s decision a “stab on the back” for drought-afflicted African countries hit by rising food prices.

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 Kremlin said Putin plans bilateral talks with all the African heads of state participating in the summit.

“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 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 limit 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. Putin said trade had risen almost 35% in the first half of this year.

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.

(Updates with African Union, Putin comments in sixth and seventh paragraphs)

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