ST. PETERSBURG, June 17. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin showed the initialed draft agreement with Ukraine, which was drawn up in March 2022 in Istanbul, to leaders and representatives of several African countries at their meeting on Saturday.

"I would like to draw your attention to the fact that with [Turkish] President [Tayyip] Erdogan’s assistance, as you know, a string of talks between Russia and Ukraine took place in Turkey so as to work out both the confidence-building measures you mentioned, and to draw up the text of the agreement. We did not discuss with the Ukrainian side that this treaty would be classified, but we have never presented it, nor commented on it. This draft agreement was initialed by the head of the Kiev negotiation team. He put his signature there. Here it is," the Russian president said showing the paper to the African delegation.