INTERNATIONAL: South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday ,March 17, has blamed NATO for the war in Ukraine and said he would resist calls to condemn Russia, in comments that cast doubt over whether he would be accepted by Ukraine or the West as a mediator.

"The war could have been avoided if NATO had heeded the warnings from amongst its own leaders and officials over the years that its eastward expansion would lead to greater, not less, instability in the region," Ramaphosa has said, a view also maintained by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The South African president has also said rather than take an expected adversarial approach, he wanted to focus on mediation, as war was unlikely to lead to a resolution.

Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a “special operation” that it says is not designed to occupy territory but to destroy its southern neighbour's military capabilities and capture what it regards as dangerous nationalists.

Kyiv and its Western allies believe Russia have launched the unprovoked war to subjugate a neighbour Putin calls an artificial state.

Ramaphosa has also revealed that Putin had assured him personally that negotiations were making progress. The South African leader has said he had not yet talked with Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

On Friday, March 11, Ramaphosa's office has said South Africa had been asked to mediate in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and that he had told Putin it should be settled through negotiations. He did not say who had asked him to intervene.