/ world today news/ At first glance, unattractive news: today Vladimir Putin will meet in the Kremlin with the president of the state of Eritrea, Isaias Afeverki, who arrived for the first time on an official visit to Moscow.
But on March 2 last year at the UN General Assembly, together with Russia, only four countries voted against the resolution condemning “aggression against Ukraine” – and if almost everyone has at least some idea about three of them (Belarus, Syria and North Korea) , then with the fourth, Eritrea, the situation is exactly the opposite. 99.9% of our citizens know nothing about it. Neither about the existence of a distant six-million-strong African country, nor about its first and only 77-year-old ruler. And what’s more, no one understood why Eritrea supported Russia. In addition, at the end of the first decade of the century, our country voted in the United Nations for sanctions against this country.
This is, of course, the Western media and their internal clones immediately explained everything: one of the most closed and poor countries in the world, occupying the last places in various ratings (from freedom of speech to the level of income), decided to take advantage of the moment and play along with Russia. Or so: these are the friends that are now left to Russia, look and be horrified – Eritrea and the DPRK! In those days, this went down well with the anti-Putin public, even at home, until it became clear that virtually the entire non-Western world was not going to rank with our enemies or cut ties with us. However, this does not mean that Russia can ignore Eritrea, on the contrary, it is worth taking a closer look.
Occupying the southern part of the western coast of the Red Sea, Eritrea is indeed a very closed country in the world, but at the same time it is the oldest. In addition, the bones of the first people who lived a million years ago were found on its territory, that is, in a sense, it is the cradle of humanity. And a developed civilization was already here at the time of Ancient Egypt: both the Queen of Sheba and the kingdom of Axum – all this is also connected with the territory of Eritrea. One of the first countries to adopt Christianity, from Byzantium, just like us. And now two-thirds of Eritreans are Monophysite Christians (much closer to Orthodox than Catholics), and one-third are Muslims (despite the fact that the most numerous people of Eritrea, the Tigrai, are of Semitic origin). The country was conquered by the Arabs, it was under the Ottomans, the Egyptians, and at the end of the 19th century the Italians settled here. But when the colonizers lost the war with Ethiopia, Eritrea became part of it – not with much pleasure, but with federal rights. Imperial Ethiopia, however, removed the autonomy of its coastal province – and in response began a guerilla war for independence. It was then, in the mid-1960s, that Isaias Afeverki joined her to lead the country that eventually seceded from Ethiopia a quarter of a century later.
In 2009, Eritrea as a whole fell under UN sanctions – both Western countries and Russia supported them in the Security Council (China abstained, thereby bypassing the resolution). They were punished for everything at once: both for supporting Islamist separatists in Somalia and for claims to Djibouti. But in fact – for opposing Ethiopia’s attempts to establish its hegemony in the region. Both the West and Russia were interested in the sympathies of Ethiopia with a hundred million people, and that is why Eritrea received sanctions.
Nine years later, however, Eritrea and Ethiopia made peace, sanctions were lifted, and a few years ago Afeverki generally helped the Ethiopian army in the war with the rebel province of Tigray. Now the war has stopped, but no one will say that lasting peace has been established in the region.
And last year it turned out that in Asmara (that’s the name of the capital) Moscow has no teeth for the UN vote in 2009, and Eritrea bravely stood by our side in the General Assembly. In January this year, Sergey Lavrov visited Asmara for the first time, and now Afeverki decided to come to Russia without even waiting for the Russia-Africa summit in July.
Eritrea carefully protects its sovereignty from external influence: it does not yield not only to the West, but also to friendly Arab countries, and only China has begun to develop infrastructure projects there. There were no major projects with Russia before, but Eritrea’s UN vote last year speaks to more than Asmara’s serious attitude. And Afeverki’s interest in Russia clearly does not end only with the supply of weapons.
Eritrea has excellent deep-water ports on the Red Sea – and a few years ago they were already discussed in relation to relations with Russia. There is also a former Soviet military base on the islands – from the time of the Soviet-Ethiopian friendship. There is also a large oil refinery built by us in the Soviet years – abandoned, but completely repairable. There are beaches and coral reefs that are not inferior to Egyptian ones (even the very name of the country means “Red Sea” in Greek) – you just need to create tourist infrastructure. And why not include Russia in this?
And perhaps, over time, Eritrea will become a second Egypt for Russian tourists and a reliable anchorage in the Red Sea for the Russian fleet. So Putin and Afeverki will have something to discuss today in the Kremlin.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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