{"id":5297,"date":"2023-05-15T18:13:50","date_gmt":"2023-05-15T13:13:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/?p=5297"},"modified":"2023-05-15T18:13:52","modified_gmt":"2023-05-15T13:13:52","slug":"russia-says-s-africa-military-delegation-visiting-moscow-agencies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/politics\/russia-says-s-africa-military-delegation-visiting-moscow-agencies\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia says S.Africa military delegation visiting Moscow: agencies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Moscow, May 15: The commander of South Africa&#8217;s ground forces is in Moscow for talks, Russian news agencies said Monday, days after Washington accused Pretoria of secretly providing arms to Russia<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lieutenant General Lawrence Mbatha is heading a delegation that discussed &#8220;issues relating to military cooperation and interaction&#8221; with their Russian counterparts, the agencies said, citing the Russian defence ministry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Last Thursday the US ambassador to Pretoria Reuben Brigety said that the United States believed weapons and ammunition had been laden onto a Russian freighter that docked at a Cape Town naval base in December.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said the matter was &#8220;being looked into&#8221; and &#8220;in time we will be able to speak about it.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The US welcomed the promises to probe the allegations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>South Africa has refused to condemn the conflict in Ukraine, which has largely isolated Moscow on the international stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The country &#8212; an African powerhouse that also wields moral clout for its victory over apartheid &#8212; says it wants to stay neutral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But critics cite a number of recent incidents as evidence of a tilt towards the Kremlin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On Friday, following the scandal, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke on the phone with Ramaphosa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Both leaders agreed to &#8220;intensify mutually beneficial ties&#8221; according to the Kremlin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And on Monday, Mbatha &#8220;visited educational institution of the ground forces and enterprises of the military-industrial complex&#8221; of Russia, agencies said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;Agreements were reached to further increase cooperation between ground forces in various fields,&#8221; Russian agency Interfax said.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Moscow, May 15: The commander of South Africa&#8217;s ground forces is in Moscow for talks, Russian news agencies said Monday, days after Washington accused Pretoria of secretly providing arms to Russia. Lieutenant General Lawrence Mbatha is heading a delegation that discussed &#8220;issues relating to military cooperation and interaction&#8221; with their Russian counterparts, the agencies said, [&hellip;]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":5298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[396,342,2621],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest","category-politics","category-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5297"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5297\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}