The first stop of the Russian Foreign Minister in Egypt. Moscow admits raid on Odessa port: Military targets hit
Africa at the same time the granary of Russian foreign policy and the main victim of the Russian wheat war. Some of the illegitimate sanctions they have imposed on us, such as those affecting insurance companies, access to foreign ports of our ships and vice versa, are an obstacle to the full implementation of the agreement on unblocking Ukrainian wheat supplies. It is no coincidence that Sergej Lavrov uttered these sentences in Cairo halfway between the barter proposal and the unsolicited apologies, during the first stage of his African trip, also appealing to the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to facilitate the revocation of the measures decided by the West.
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It was March 2, 2022, a week after the war began, when the United Nations General Assembly proposed a resolution calling on Russia to cease the use of force against Ukraine with immediate effect. That text was approved by 141 member countries and rejected by 5 others, including Eritrea. 35 abstained, including 25 African states. The Kremlin thus reaped the concrete fruits of the ties created in the last twenty years through a series of trade agreements with that continent. But looking at the southern hemisphere is not a novelty introduced by the current leaders of the Kremlin. The first to invest in Africa and its discontent with the West was Nikita Khrushchev in the late 1950s, as a reaction to the Cold War with the US. The Soviet Union committed most of the funds destined abroad to finance projects in Algeria, Libya, Angola and Guinea. With Putin, ties have grown closer. It was he who proposed the cancellation as a gesture of friendship of Algeria’s nearly $ 5 billion debt against Russia. Then a very cheap gas agreement was signed through Gazprom by the then National Liberation Front.
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The African policy of Russia has become a branch of foreign policy, with the appointment starting in 2011 of a special representative for Cooperation who has the same powers as a ministercapable of signing agreements in the metallurgical, mining and diamond sectors, but also in the military and security fields.In 2019, the first Russia-Africa summit was held in Sochi.
But today precisely those African countries to which Putin constantly refers in his speeches on the construction of a new world order, detached from the West, are the most affected by the war in Ukraine. First, because of the shortage of food, and then because of the fact that a large part of the European resources destined to aid poor countries have been directed to the reception of Ukrainian refugees.
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Ukraine will clear the ports and let the ships go to sea, while Russia, Turkey and another party, determined later, will escort the ships, Lavrov explained to the Arab League yesterday, stating that the Russia-UN memorandum signed in concomitance with the Istanbul agreements binds the UN secretary general to start the process, persuading Western countries to lift all restrictions on the export of Russian wheat. After the initial denial, Moscow acknowledged yesterday that it bombed the port of Odessa on Saturdayclaiming that it would be a high-precision attack that would destroy a Ukrainian warship and US-supplied Harpoon anti-ship missiles.
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In an article by his signature published in the main African newspapers, Lavrov writes that your country supports Africa in its struggle to escape the eternal colonial yoke and rejects the accusation of exporting the famine, defining this claim as a poisoned fruit of Western propaganda. Forced to add that Western sanctions have exacerbated negative trends and dynamics of the international market for basic necessities. The next stops on his journey will be in Ethiopia, Uganda and Congo. All allies, all exhausted, and perplexed about the Russian strategy. We will honor our obligations with you promised the seasoned Foreign Minister. Who knows if that’s enough. Attention to Africa.
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July 24, 2022 (change July 24, 2022 | 23:02)
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