ST. PETERSBURG, July 28. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin has pledged that Moscow will only increase cooperation with African countries, as it is a natural process.

At the plenary session of the Russia-Africa summit, the president responded to a comment from one of the participants, who said that "some people are surprised by Russia's growing attention to Africa."

"I don’t think it's about surprise. It's about some wariness about this process," Putin said.

"It is more surprising that at some point Russia started to pay less attention to Africa," he said. "Despite gaining some positive experience over the previous decades, we still weren’t paying due attention to the African dimension."

"But given Africa's future, given Africa's potential and given our inventory of achievements of the past decades, it is absolutely natural that we - Russia and Africa - are rebuilding our relations. And this process will only gain momentum," the president said.

He described the current summit as "an attempt to move in this very direction."

The second Russia-Africa summit is taking place at St. Petersburg’s Expoforum convention center from July 27-28. An economic and humanitarian forum is running in parallel to the event. Like the previous summit, the upcoming one will be held under the motto For Peace, Security and Development. The Roscongress Foundation is the summit’s organizer while TASS is the summit’s photo hosting agency and media partner. TASS is also holding the second Russia-Africa Media Forum.