South Africa's president, in Russia as part of a delegation pushing for peace between Kyiv and Moscow, told his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on Saturday that the fighting had to stop.
His delegation put forward a set of principles that the Kremlin deemed "very difficult to implement," a day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ruled out talks with Moscow.
The delegation brought the voice of a continent that has badly suffered from repercussions of the Ukraine conflict, particularly with rising grain prices.