Officials in South Africa look irritated by persistent questions about how they will handle the possible attendance of Russian President Vladimir Putin at a BRICS (Brazil Russia India China and South Africa) summit which they are hosting in August...

Vekselberg an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin is subject to US sanctions against dealing with Russia...

This year South Africa chairs the BRICS grouping and will host its summit later this year an event due could bring Russia's President Vladimir Putin and China's President Xi Jinping along with massive international attention to South Africa...

And like President Vladimir Putin's government Issayas's officials have developed a parallel offshore economy to evade sanctions but also capable of laundering vast sums generated from illicit enterprises smuggling and trafficking...

Russian officials are confident that South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa will attend President Vladimir Putin's Russia-Africa summit due to be held in late July in St Petersburg...

It resents the western view that its role in the region is nothing more than the Wagner Group run by Yevgeny Prigozhin a Vladimir Putin confidant...

It is financed directly by the Kremlin in the service of President Vladimir Putin's determination to confront France...

But the risk at that meeting which is set to be the first face-to-face encounter since the pandemic between China's Xi Jinping Russia's Vladimir Putin and US's Joe Biden is that geopolitics again push cooperations on debt and climate to the margins...

Africa Confidential understands that there will be no overt attempts to woo the President away from his refusal to condemn President Vladimir Putin's aggression in Ukraine...

UN Secretary General António Guterres explained that he was late for his first press conference because he was on a call to Russia's President Vladimir Putin discussing details of the deal to allow the export of millions of tonnes of grain from blockaded ports in the Black Sea...