South Africa's army chief, Lieutenant General Lawrence Mbatha, is on an official visit to Russia, just days after the US accused the country of siding with the Soviet state in the war in Ukraine by supplying arms.
Mbatha is meeting with his Russian counterpart, General Oleg Salyukov, the commander of Russia's ground forces, on what President Cyril Ramaphosa has described as matters of 'military cooperation'.
According to Russian state news agency TASS, the head of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) is in Moscow with a full delegation for talks on 'improving combat readiness'.
Only last week, US Ambassador Reuben Brigety broke diplomatic protocol and went on record accusing South Africa of supplying war equipment to Russia.
He said the US was certain that this military equipment had been secretly loaded onto a Russian ship called the Lady R at a naval base near Cape Town in December.
Ramaphosa denied the US allegations. He also said that Mbatha's trip had been planned in advance of the ambassador's allegations.
Ambassador Brigety subsequently apologised for raising the matter publicly when it was supposedly being dealt with behind closed doors, but neither he nor a US State Department official have withdrawn the central allegation that South Africa violated its self-proclaimed "non-aligned" status to aid the Russian military.
Investigations have not revealed exactly what the South Africans loaded aboard the Lady R, or why her docking in Simonstown to unload a SANDF order in 2019 was not in itself a violation of US sanctions imposed over Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as the ship itself was specifically sanctioned by Washington.
The timing of the South African military chiefs' visit to Moscow, so soon after last week's events in which the US ambassador received a harsh rebuke from his South African counterparts, is seen by political observers as only deepening the growing rift between Washington and Pretoria.
The South African and Russian military chiefs reportedly discussed "issues of military cooperation and interaction aimed at the implementation of projects to improve the combat readiness of the armed forces of the two countries," TASS reported, citing the Russian defence ministry.
One observation was that the Russians appeared to be "maximising the strategic character of the visit", possibly to further embarrass the US.
The South Africans, however, downplayed the significance and timing of the visit, calling it merely a "goodwill visit" and saying it was the result of a "long-standing arrangement" that had been planned "well in advance".
Lt Gen Mbatha's itinerary for his visit to Russia includes a visit to the "Higher Combined Army Academy and the Artillery Military Academy".
“It must be noted that S Africa has military bilateral relations with various countries in the continent and beyond,” the SANDF said, in its low-key statement confirming the visit.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa's national security adviser, Sydney Mufamadi, has just returned from a mission to Washington to reassure the US that South Africa remains "non-aligned" on the conflict in Ukraine, in a bid to stave off possible US economic sanctions over the Lady R row.
Domestic opponents of the Ramaphosa government, including the official opposition, the Democratic Alliance (DA), slammed the high-level military visit as "insensitive" and "callous", especially with billions of dollars in trade, aid and other support from Washington at stake.
