African countries deserve their “rightful place” in determining the world’s fate, the Russian leader said
Russia welcomes the rising international authority of individual African states as well as the continent as a whole, and their desire to make their voices strongly heard, President Vladimir Putin said in an article released ahead of the second Russia-Africa Summit and Russia-Africa Economic and Humanitarian Forum in St. Petersburg.
In the piece, penned by Putin for major African media and shared by the Kremlin early Monday morning, the Russian president said that Moscow “highly values the honestly-gained capital of friendship and cooperation” and welcomes African partners’ desire to “take the continent’s problems into their own hands.”
“We are brought together by a common desire to shape a system of relations based on the priority of international law, respect for national interests, indivisibility of security, and recognition of the…