While few African leaders have publicly supported Russia, no African countries have joined American and European

sanctions against
Moscow.

That balancing act was apparent last month when the head of the African Union, President Macky Sall of Senegal, met with Mr. Putin. Mr.
Sall begged Mr. Putin to free up Ukrainian grain but he also echoed Moscow’s argument that Western sanctions had worsened the food
crisis, explicitly calling for the lifting of restrictions on exports of Russian wheat and fertilizer.

Though the sanctions do not in fact cover those commodities, shipping companies, insurers, banks and other businesses have been
reluctant to do business with Russia for fear of breaking the rules or harming their reputations.

In his article, Mr. Lavrov praised African leaders for resisting Western pressure to join the sanctions against Russia. “Such an independent
path deserves deep respect,” he wrote.

For Mr. Putin, the idea that Russia is leading a worldwide uprising against Western hegemony has emerged as the core of his message to
global public opinion amid the war. He has repeatedly described the population of the United States and its allies as a “golden billion” that
lives well at the expense of everyone else.

“Why should this golden billion, which is only part of the global population, dominate everyone else and enforce its rules of conduct that
are based on the illusion of exceptionalism?” he said Wednesday at a forum in Moscow. “It mainly got to where it is by robbing other
peoples in Asia and Africa.”

But Mr. Putin’s message has been complicated by the fact that Ukraine has been unable to export its grain by sea since the beginning of
the war, and that Russian officials have not shied away from using the threat of starvation in developing countries as a bargaining chip.

Murithi Mutiga, the Africa program director for the International Crisis Group, said Russia had several advantages as it sought to win
hearts and minds on the continent: a network of elites that studied in the Soviet Union, the “lingering loyalty” of groups it supported in the
fight against apartheid in South Africa, and the fact that it supplies arms to numerous African governments.

“Moscow will, however, be disappointed if it expects more African governments to offer it full backing,” Mr. Mutiga said. “The
overwhelming instinct among authorities on the continent is to remain nonaligned and to stay out of the confrontation between Russia and
the West.”

— Anton Troianovski, Abdi Latif Dahir and Vivian Yee

‘An abyss of fear’: A report accuses Russia of further abuses against civilians.