Lies and Racism
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Kiev rebuffs African peace initiative led by South African President as Pretoria refutes Western media reports that Kiev was attacked during visit
South African presidential spokesman Vincent Magwenya has accused Reuters of peddling lies, after the news agency claimed that a Russian missile strike sent his delegation running for a bunker in Kiev. It was not the first time Ukrainian authorities sounded air raid sirens when foreign leaders arrived in the city.
Magwenya arrived in Kiev on Friday with President Cyril Ramaphosa, who along with five other African leaders met with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to promote a negotiated end to the conflict with Russia. According to Reuters, air raid sirens and explosions were heard in the city, and the group was whisked to a shelter underneath a hotel.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and Comoros President Azali Assoumani speak at a press conference in Kiev, June 16, 2023. © Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP
Ukrainian officials seized on the opportunity to accuse Russia of undermining the peace mission. “Russian missiles are a message to Africa: Russia wants more war, not peace,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba wrote on Twitter. “Whenever a high-ranking foreign delegation visits Ukraine, Russia greets it with a missile attack on our peaceful cities,”said Andrey Yermak, head of the Ukrainian presidential staff.
However, no sirens or explosions were actually heard, Magwenya said. “We didn’t hear any explosions,” he tweeted. “Instead, we saw people going on about their day leisurely. Everything seems normal from what we have experienced thus far.”
“It’s very strange that we didn’t hear or see an explosion. There’s obviously some deliberate misinformation being spread here,” he told South Africa’s News24 outlet. “As we expected this mission was never going to be easy but some of the hurdles are deeply disturbing, like… this so-called explosion.”
One day earlier, a plane carrying Ramaphosa’s security detail and a number of journalists was held at Warsaw’s Chopin Airport in Poland, with Polish authorities demanding the security personnel surrender their weapons. After a 26-hour standoff, passengers were finally allowed to disembark on Friday afternoon.
Throughout its military operation in Ukraine, Russia has attacked military and infrastructure targets around Kiev with missiles and drones. However, air raid sirens have also been turned on almost every time a high-profile Western leader visits Zelensky in the city, even at times when no missile strikes were taking place.
When sirens blared as US President Joe Biden arrived in Kiev in February, CNN reporter Alex Marquardt noted that no alarms had gone off for five days beforehand, with the alert only triggered when cameras were on Biden and Zelensky.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky brushed off the African Union peace initiative on Friday, insisting there can be no negotiations with Russia. The high-ranking delegation of six heads of state, led by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, visited Kiev before moving on to St. Petersburg.
“I have said clearly and many times during our meeting today that allowing any talks with Russia while the occupiers are still on our land means freezing the conflict, the pain and the suffering,” Zelensky said at the press conference afterward.
According to Zelensky, Russia “deceived” the world for years with the Minsk process and is trying to do so again. For peace to happen, he argued, “Russian troops need to leave our entire independent territory.”
Zelensky has previously turned down the Vatican’s offer to mediate a ceasefire as well, telling the papal envoy Cardinal Matteo Zuppi earlier this month that he would only accept the terms of his own Ukrainian “peace formula.” The list of ten demands includes Russia’s withdrawal from all territories Kiev claims as its own, payment of reparations, war crimes trials and NATO membership for Ukraine. Moscow has dismissed it as delusional and said that any peace talks will be with Zelensky’s “masters” in the West, rather than their puppet.
Source Reuters/RT
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