A delegation of African leaders has arrived in Ukraine that will hold separate meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin and present a peace plan to them.
The delegation includes South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, Senegal's President Macky Sall, Egyptian Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly, and leaders of Uganda, Republic of Congo, Zambia, and Comoro Islands.
Ramaphosa's press service said that he was met by a Ukrainian special envoy and South Africa's ambassador at a rail station near Bucha, the Kyiv suburb where bodies of civilians lay scattered in the streets following Russian forces' withdrawal last spring.
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The Bucha visit was symbolically significant, as its name has come to stand for the barbarity of Moscow's military since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The brutal Russian occupation of Bucha left hundreds of civilians dead in the streets and in mass graves.
Ramaphosa said last month that Zelenskyy and Putin had agreed to separate meetings with the delegation.
The delegation was set to travel to St. Petersburg later Friday, where Russia's top international economic conference is taking place, and meet with Putin on Saturday.
What are the peace mission's objectives?
Citing Reuters, Guardian reported that the peace mission could propose a series of "confidence building measures" during initial efforts at mediation. The reprot said that the mission's objective is "to promote the importance of peace and to encourage the parties to agree to a diplomacy-led process of negotiations".
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"Those measures could include a Russian troop pull-back, removal of tactical nuclear weapons from Belarus, suspension of implementation of an international criminal court arrest warrant targeting Putin, and sanctions relief, it indicated," reported Guardian.
Officials who helped prepare the talks told AP the African leaders not only aimed to initiate a peace process but also assess how Russia, which is under heavy international sanctions, can be paid for the fertiliser exports Africa desperately needs.
They are also set to discuss the related issue of ensuring more grain shipments out of Ukraine amid the war and the possibility of more prisoner swaps.
China has also been working on a peace proposal, but it appears to have few chances of success as the warring sides appear no closer to a cease-fire.
Visit comes amid Ukrainian counter-offensive
The African peace overture comes as Ukraine launches a counter-offensive to dislodge the Russian forces from occupied areas, using Western-supplied advanced weapons in attacks along the 1,000-kilometre (600-mile) front line.
Western analysts and military officials have cautioned that the campaign could last a long time.
Ukrainian troops recorded successes along three stretches of the front line in the country's south and east, a spokesman for Ukraine's General Staff said in a statement Friday.
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According to Andriy Kovalev, Ukrainian forces have moved forward south of the town of Orikhiv in the Zaporizhzhia region, in the direction of the village of Robotyne, as well as around Levadne and Staromaiorske, on the boundary between Zaporizhzhia and the Donetsk province further east.
Kovalev also said that Ukrainian troops advanced in some areas around Vuhledar, a mining town in Donetsk that was the site of one of the main tank battles in the war so far.
It wasn't possible to indepenently verify the claims.
Russian shelling on Thursday and overnight killed two civilians and wounded two others in the southern Kherson region, its Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said.
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Russian forces over the previous day launched 54 strikes across the province, using mortars, artillery, multiple rocket launchers, drones, missiles and aircraft, according to Prokudin.
Ten people were wounded over that same period in the eastern Donetsk region, local Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said.
Airstrikes in Kyiv during delegation's visit
As the African delegation arrived in Kyiv, a series of Russian air strikes targeted Ukrainian capital Kyiv, according to reports.
Guardian, citing updates from the Ukrainian military, reported that Ukrainian air defences shot down six Kinzhal ballistic missiles, six Kalibr cruise missiles, and two reconnaissance drones.
"The attack comes shortly after South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa arrived in the capital as part of a peace delegation which is also expected to visit Moscow. An air alert is in place across much of Ukraine with reports of Kalibr cruise missiles being fired from the Black Sea," reported Guardian.
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(With AP inputs)
