Russia will reopen its embassy in Burkina Faso on Thursday, which it closed in 1992, continuing a rapprochement with this Sahelian country led by a military regime since last year, and which seeks to diversify its partners since its break with France .
“Russia officially opens its embassy this Thursday in Ouagadougou,” announced the Burkinabè Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a press release.
According to the same source, this announcement follows discussions on this subject on Wednesday in Ouagadougou between the new head of Burkinabe diplomacy, Karamoko Jean-Marie Traoré, and the Russian ambassador to Côte d’Ivoire accredited to Burkina Faso, Alexeï Saltykov.
The ambassador to Burkina will be appointed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Alexei Saltykov told AFP.
Mr. Saltykov until now resided in Abidjan but has made regular trips to Ouagadougou in recent months.
“We arrived in Ouagadougou to relaunch the activities of the Russian embassy in this country which is our long-standing partner and with which we are linked by strong ties of friendship,” Mr. Saltykov also declared, quoted by the official Russian agency TASS.
He added that he would initially head the diplomatic mission in Burkina.
The ceremony marking the opening of the embassy will take place at 12:20 p.m. It will be chaired by the Burkinabè Prime Minister, Appolinaire Joachimson Kyélèm de Tambéla.
“Bilateral cooperation has never stopped in the political and economic fields,” he stressed.
According to the press release from the Burkinabè Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Saltykov also announced that “the food aid announced by his country for the benefit of Burkina Faso will arrive in the coming days”.
Vladimir Putin announced during the Saint Petersburg summit in July that Moscow would deliver cereals free of charge to six African countries, including Burkina Faso, in the coming months.
The Ouagadougou embassy in Moscow was reopened in 2013, after closing in 1996, according to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Continuity
Since the last coup d’état which brought Captain Ibrahim Traoré to power in September 2022, Burkina Faso has severed relations with France and sought to diversify its partners.
Ouagadougou notably obtained the departure of French troops from its soil at the start of the year, before moving closer to Russia.
An agreement was signed by the two countries in mid-October for the construction of a Russian nuclear power plant in Burkina, where less than a quarter of the population has access to electricity.
At the beginning of September, a Russian delegation led by the Deputy Minister of Defense, Younous-Bek Evkourov, went to Ouagadougou to discuss issues of development and military cooperation with Ibrahim Traoré.
Mr. Traoré later added that most of the equipment of the Burkina army was Russian.
This Sahelian country has been facing deadly and recurring jihadist violence over a large part of its territory for several years, which has left more than 17,000 dead and more than two million internally displaced.
Ouagadougou has moved closer to Mali and Niger — two countries led by military regimes and linked to Burkina through the Alliance of Sahel States — a defense cooperation — which also maintain relations with Moscow.