African leaders arrive in Russia for summit as Kremlin seeks allies amid fighting in Ukraine

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) — Some African leaders have arrived in Russia for a summit with President Vladimir Putin as the Kremlin seeks more allies amid the fighting in Ukraine. Putin has billed the two-day summit that opens Thursday in St. Petersburg as a major event that would help bolster ties with a continent of 1.3 billion people that is increasingly assertive on the global stage. On Wednesday, Putin is set to hold separate meetings with the leaders of Egypt and Ethiopia ahead of the summit. It’s the second Russia-Africa summit since 2019, and the number of heads of states attending it shrank from 43 then to 17 now because of what the Kremlin described as Western pressure to discourage African nations from attending it.