Russian President heads to Africa

MOSCOW – Russian President Vladimir Putin, a vocal advocate of a “multipolar” world, will expand his diplomatic horizons this week with his first visits to South Africa and Morocco, looking to expand economic ties with the two African countries.

Putin will be in South Africa tomorrow and Wednesday followed by Morocco on Wednesday and Thursday for meetings with his South African counterpart, President Thabo Mbeki, and Morocco’s King Mohammed VI, the Kremlin said in a statement. “Since it hopes to restore its image as a superpower, Russia wants to demonstrate its presence everywhere and is ready to develop relations with the entire world: with Latin America – a traditional sphere of influence of the United States – with southeast Asia, and now with Africa,” said Yevgeny Volk, a political analyst with the Heritage Foundation think tank.Meeting with foreign ambassadors to Moscow in June, Putin said that traditional spheres of influence in Latin America and Africa were “a thing of the past,” and that Russia could find a new “field of operations.”Analysts said Putin’s pair of African visits would focus on economic relations.Russian companies’ chief interest in South Africa is investment in metals and diamond mining, according to a report by the Centre for Strategic and Technological Studies (CSTS).”South Africa and Russia are in a dominant position in the diamond and platinum markets,” and coordinating their approach to the markets would be “advantageous” for both countries, analyst Andrei Maslov said in the report.Moscow, which already supplies enriched uranium to the nuclear centre Koeburg near Cape Town, could increase uranium supplies in the future to Johannesburg, which is developing a new type of nuclear reactor, Maslov noted.Business aside, Putin and Mbeki will discuss the conflicts in Sudan and the Ivory Coast, the situation in the DRC since its first round of presidential elections, the Iran nuclear standoff and the crisis in the Middle East.On September 7, King Mohammed VI will offer his Russian guest an official dinner at the royal palace in Casablanca around 100 kilometres south of the capital Rabat.News24″Since it hopes to restore its image as a superpower, Russia wants to demonstrate its presence everywhere and is ready to develop relations with the entire world: with Latin America – a traditional sphere of influence of the United States – with southeast Asia, and now with Africa,” said Yevgeny Volk, a political analyst with the Heritage Foundation think tank.Meeting with foreign ambassadors to Moscow in June, Putin said that traditional spheres of influence in Latin America and Africa were “a thing of the past,” and that Russia could find a new “field of operations.”Analysts said Putin’s pair of African visits would focus on economic relations.Russian companies’ chief interest in South Africa is investment in metals and diamond mining, according to a report by the Centre for Strategic and Technological Studies (CSTS).”South Africa and Russia are in a dominant position in the diamond and platinum markets,” and coordinating their approach to the markets would be “advantageous” for both countries, analyst Andrei Maslov said in the report.Moscow, which already supplies enriched uranium to the nuclear centre Koeburg near Cape Town, could increase uranium supplies in the future to Johannesburg, which is developing a new type of nuclear reactor, Maslov noted.Business aside, Putin and Mbeki will discuss the conflicts in Sudan and the Ivory Coast, the situation in the DRC since its first round of presidential elections, the Iran nuclear standoff and the crisis in the Middle East.On September 7, King Mohammed VI will offer his Russian guest an official dinner at the royal palace in Casablanca around 100 kilometres south of the capital Rabat.News24