By Enyichukwu Enemanna
The Foreign Minister of Russia, Sergey Lavrov has assured Moscow’s assistance to help West African countries deal with armed groups in the region as Moscow battles to expand its influence in African continent.
Speaking on Tuesday in Bamako, Lavrov commended the ties between his country and Mali in fighting armed groups during his first visit to Mali, which he described as “historic”.
“The fight against terrorism is, of course, an issue for the other countries in the region,” Lavrov told a news conference in Mali’s capital, Bamako.
“We are going to provide our assistance to them to overcome these difficulties. This concerns Guinea, Burkina Faso and Chad and the Sahel region generally and even the coastal states on the Gulf of Guinea,” he said.
Mali had long relied on former colonial power France for military assistance in fighting the armed uprising.
France last year pulled troops out of the West African nation as tensions with the military government reached a breaking point.
Since seizing power in 2020, Mali’s military government has brought in Russian planes, helicopters and paramilitaries to strengthen its fight against armed rebels.
France says the Russian operatives are Wagner mercenaries – a private military group that Moscow has deployed in Syria and Ukraine, experts say.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the United Nations have implicated Wagner and the Malian army in an alleged massacre at Moura in central Mali last March in which several hundred people were rounded up and killed.
Lavrov promised Mali further military support and declared Russia’s wider backing for Africa in the face of what he described as the West’s “neocolonial approach”.
“We are going to provide our support for resolving problems on the African continent,” he said.
“We always start from the basis that African problems must be resolved by African solutions.”
