Mediation experts say the Russia-Ukraine war is 'far from being ripe for mediation', as President Cyril Ramaphosa and five other African leaders prepare to undertake a peace mission to Moscow and Kyiv.

Jakkie Cilliers, chairperson of the Institute for Security Studies, said most analysts who participated in the annual high-level Stockholm Forum on Peace and Development this week believed there was no space now for outside mediation:

"Eventually, this war will probably be resolved by direct negotiations."

Analysts believe a "mutual-hurting stalemate" that could push both Russia and Ukraine to the peace table is still between six months and two years away.

Ramaphosa, who spoke on the phone at the weekend to Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said this week they had agreed to separate meetings in Moscow and Kyiv with the African delegation, which also comprises Senegalese President Macky Sall, Republic of Congo President Denis Sassou-Nguesso, Zambian President Haikande Hichilema, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

This is not an official African Union mission - it has emerged that the initiative came from the private London-based Brazzaville Foundation headed by Frenchman Jean-Yves Ollivier, who has long been involved in peace initiatives in Africa.

In the 1980s he brokered a prisoner swap in which Angola exchanged the captured South African soldier Wynand du Toit for Angolan prisoners of war held by South Africa's apartheid...