PRETORIA, APR 24 (AFP/APP/DNA):Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to South Africa Thursday underscores a shift in Pretoria’s stance on Russia’s invasion more than three years ago, which it had initially refused to condemn, analysts say.

President Cyril Ramaphosa will host Zelensky on his first visit to Africa just weeks after South Africa joined for the first time a UN General Assembly resolution criticising Russia for the war.

The UN’s February resolution “reaffirmed its commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence, unity, and territorial integrity” against “the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by the Russian Federation”.

“South Africa has been criticised previously for taking quite an ambiguous position in defining the conflict,” Institute for Security Studies researcher Priyal Singh told AFP.

“And I think the UN resolution basically set that straight: South Africa has recognised that it needs to take a much less ambiguous role and to robustly engage with all sides,” he said.

Pretoria’s close ties with the Kremlin — forged by its support in the struggle against the previous apartheid regime — has raised eyebrows at home and abroad, with attempts to pressure it to drop a non-aligned stance.

The relationship even fuelled claims by a former US ambassador that a Russian ship docked in Cape Town in 2022 was stocked with weapons intended for the conflict.

South Africa wants to believe that it can work with both sides in the conflict and facilitate an inclusive peace process, perhaps drawing on its own relatively smooth transition out of white-minority rule in 1994 after decades of armed struggle.

The visit is a “continuation of our efforts to try to bring about a peaceful resolution”, Ramaphosa’s spokesman, Vincent Magwenya, said last month. “This is the position that South Africa has held from the beginning of that conflict.”