ISLAMABAD: On a visit to Germany, Kenyan President William Ruto called on China to encourage Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.
Ruto’s visit to comes as Kenya is grappling with high inflation rates partly due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has caused shortages of grain and fertilizers in sub-Saharan Africa.
He also downplayed the anti-government protests rocking his country as an opposition ploy.
However, the protests over the soaring prices of essential commodities have further threatened to collapse Kenya’s fledgling economy.
Kenya’s president on Ukraine war
He said that the war in Ukraine had badly affected commodity prices of fertilizers and grain, adding that the world community needed to work towards a viable and peaceful resolution of this problem, DW reported on Wednesday.
Ruto said that a mechanism should be found to end this war. He emphasized that it was necessary to stop the number of victims of the war from increasing further.
Ruto stressed that many nations, including Kenya, required help in accessing grain and fertilizers, adding that his government was searching for ways to avoid dependency on the supply chain of these commodities.
Talking about China’s mediating efforts to end the conflict, Ruto said China should do more than ii presently doing since many nations are still dealing with the damaging effects of the COVID-19 pandemic” and the war was not helpful to anyone.
He said that from even a strategic point of view, Beijing should be pushing for the end of the war because the world was already coming from the devastating pandemic effects.
He added that China has huge interests in many areas of the world, including Africa, where they have stationed resources. They have assisted in the building of infrastructure and injected their capital.
He further said that he did not think the war was assisting China in any way to recover from the investments they had made globally.
