The scene takes place in Geneva on March 1, 2022. As the Conference on Disarmament broadcast the speech of the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, many delegations, including Western countries, ostensibly left the room in solidarity with Kiev. Only a few diplomats remained. Among them, the Algerian and Tunisian delegations. Officially, these two countries have been careful not to comment on the conflict, like many African countries, with the notable exception of South Africa which has urged Russia “to immediately withdraw its forces from Ukraine”. However, Pretoria and Moscow have diplomatic ties dating back to apartheid. Both countries are members of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).
It is difficult to highlight Ukraine and its war situation in a southern Africa very favorable to Russia, historically perceived as a bulwark against colonization and apartheid, explained the Ukrainian ambassador in Pretoria, who strives to impose his country on the landscape. “Ukraine does not exist for South Africans”explains Liubov Abravitova. “They are grateful to Russia and forget that when the USSR was mobilizing against apartheid, Ukraine was still part of it,” she argues to AFP. After 1991 and the dissolution of the Union, “We were busy building our country, our economy. Africa was not our priority and then the Russians were already established there”, she says. Ukraine had 16,000 African students, she told AFP. At the Polish border, some “have been badly treated” in long exhausting queues, without food or water, in the cold. They spoke of racism, saying that Ukrainians were better received than them.
On the first day of the conflict, the African Union (AU) condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and called for a “immediate ceasefire”considering that the situation was in danger of degenerating into “a planetary conflict”. The current AU chairperson, Senegalese President Macky Sall, and the chairman of the organization’s Commission Moussa Faki Mahamat, said in a joint statement that they were “extremely concerned” by the Russian invasion. They called on Moscow to “respect international law, territorial integrity and national sovereignty of Ukraine”. Several African countries have begun to repatriate their nationals from countries bordering Ukraine.
If Vladmir Putin is isolated by the West, he is far from being so in the Sahel. For many countries, it embodies “the liberator”. For several years, Russia has been gradually eating away at the French backyard. Until his eviction from Mali by a junta, which does not hide its admiration for the Russian president. Just like in Bangui, where Moscow intends to take the place of Paris. Anti-French sentiment in the Sahel is not created by Russia but instrumentalized by Moscow, which relies on the paramilitary group Wagner to extend its influence. Mali and the Central African Republic have entrusted part of their security to the company run by an oligarch close to Vladimir Putin. “Wagner’s central base is in Africa, in southern Libya, this is where all the planes transit before being transferred to the Central African Republic, to Mali. We have seen traces of flights, four a week , from the beginning of January, to Syria and then to Ukraine”assures Alexandra Jousset, author-director of the documentary Wagner, Putin’s secret army.
Other countries are playing tightrope walkers. Egypt, which welcomes hundreds of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians every year in its hotels on the Red Sea, supports the stay of tourists from these two countries now at war until a “safe return”. On the diplomatic level, Cairo pleads for “dialogue and diplomatic solutions”. A caution shared by many countries, such as Algeria or Tunisia.