#russians in africa

[africanrefugeeswelcome]

2 Russian mothers are shopping with their families in a supermarket in Nigeria, when they cross each other's path they realize that they have something in common and decide to record this moment

[ohsalome]

Oh man. An hour ago there was another air attack on Kyiv (which we defeated fully, thank the air defence). Turns out today arrived a delegation from Africa which wanted to offer a peace plan 💀💀💀

[justacynicalromantic]

Russia: We will starve Global South until the global community agrees to make Ukraine join our empire.

Global South: Russia is such a great ally! We will support Russia because we don't like how the US and western Europe forced us to be their colonies 100 years ago

[odinsblog]

Ethiopian Foreign Minister Workneh Gebeyehu presents the portrait of Nikolay Leontiev as gift to his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov on March 9, 2018

“Remember, you are white, a man of the superior race,” this was one of the rules Lieutenant Grigorii Chertkov espoused while deployed in Africa in the service of the Russian Empire in 1897. He was part of a delegation sent by Russian Emperor Nicholas II to Ethiopia to establish a formal Russian diplomatic mission with the aim of bringing the African country into the Russian imperial fold.

In the eyes of the African people who saw the Russian convoy make its way from a port in Djibouti to Addis Ababa, the Russians were probably hardly distinguishable from any other European colonial troops they had seen. Wearing white pith helmets – not only an item of headwear but also a symbol of presumed racial superiority – the Russians, like their European counterparts, were there to advance an imperial cause.

More than a century later, another Russian emissary visiting the Ethiopian capital would speak of colonialism on the African continent as if his country never tried to engage in it. At a July 2022 press conference, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov criticised the West for trying to bring back the “colonial epoch”.

His speech conveniently missed the fact that his ancestors wanted to be part of the imperial domination of Africa that defined that epoch. Indeed, today’s official Russian rhetoric outlines the history of Russian relations with Africa in exclusively anti-colonial terms. And yet, historical facts reveal that Russia was part of the imperial “scramble for Africa” – only, it failed miserably at it.

(continue reading)

[panimoonchild]

"It's out of love for you, my child. You are my child, and I love you, and I want to stay with you. But you are safe, and the children there are not. They need protection."- said Peter Fouche, a British volunteer medic, to his daughter Nikola

Rose Fouche, 87, flew from South Africa to eastern Ukraine, traveling tens of thousands of kilometers to come to the Kharkiv region to see her son Peter.

- I came to see my son, just to show him my love. I missed him, but he is doing wonderful things here. He cares about people here.

This winter, Peter recorded this desperate video for the Western world. Peter is a British volunteer paramedic who, after seeing children die at the beginning of a full-scale war, could not stay at home and went to Ukraine. It was his love for his daughter, Nikola, that motivated him to get involved. I said: "It's out of love for you, my child. You are my child, and I love you, and I want to stay with you. But you are safe, and the children there are not. They need protection."

Once in Ukraine, Peter helped build a field hospital in Brovary and received medical training. Then came Kharkiv, Bakhmut, Sievierodonetsk, and the first lives were saved on the battlefield. Together with a Ukrainian from the UK, Tatiana Millard, Peter created Project Konstantin, an organization that has been supporting civilians and medics during the war. It was named in honor of their friend who died in the battle for Kherson. With the support of international donors, who provided them with the necessary equipment. They repeatedly saved lives and each other until the last day, when Tetiana was killed on a mission. It was a heavy loss for Peter... Now he is fighting in her memory. In a difficult moment, he tries to cheer up the wounded with his British humor. Peter's soul is warmed by thoughts of his daughter, Nikola, who is waiting for him at home alive. He also receives messages from the rescued soldiers who send him their photos from time to time. "Thank you for saving my life, I'm back in the ranks."

This meeting with his mother in the frontline Kharkiv region became a breath of fresh air for Peter to continue fighting for Ukraine.

- This is my mom, my example. You look incredible!

- My Peter! My boy!

She stayed with her son in this modest room for a while and then returned home. And Peter remains with Ukraine and continues to save Ukrainian soldiers in fierce battles.

🎥 Sho_Tam

[tomorrowusa]

Ukraine is said to have provided intelligence which led to deadly attacks by insurgents on Russian mercenaries in the West African nation of Mali. FYI: Tinzaouaten, the city closest to the attacks in Mali, is 2,440 miles/3,928 km from Ukraine's port city of Odesa.

Ukraine’s military intelligence agency has claimed it was involved in an ambush that killed fighters from Russia’s Wagner group in the west African nation of Mali, thousands of miles away from the frontline in Ukraine. A Telegram channel linked to the Wagner leadership on Monday admitted the group had suffered heavy losses during fighting in Mali last week. It said Wagner and the Malian armed forces had “fought fierce battles” over a five-day period against a coalition of Tuareg separatist forces and jihadi groups, who had used heavy weapons, drones and suicide bombers. Numerous Wagner fighters, including a commander, Sergei Shevchenko, were killed, the channel said. Andrii Yusov, spokesman for Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency, said on Monday that “the rebels received necessary information, and not just information, which enabled a successful military operation against Russian war criminals”. Yusov did not say whether Ukrainian military personnel were involved in the fighting or were present in the country. He said the agency “won’t discuss the details at the moment, but there will be more to come”. The Mali government, which has been fighting various insurgencies in the north of the country for more than a decade, requested help from Wagner after a military junta took power in 2020.

The Wagner Group is still around but under new management since Putin killed off its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin.

So why is Russia in Africa?

The group is also active across Africa, and continues to be so even after Prigozhin was disgraced following a failed coup attempt last summer. He later died after an explosion onboard his plane, widely believed to have been ordered by the Kremlin, but Wagner’s influence in Africa remains. “For Moscow, the African countries where Wagner is present is just a zone of interest that allows it to get hold of resources – gold, diamonds, gas and oil – and the money goes to finance Russian aggression,” said Serhii Kuzan, director of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center in Kyiv, explaining why Ukraine might want to target Wagner in Africa. He added that the raids had additional benefits for Kyiv: “liquidating” some of the most experienced Wagner fighters and lowering the overall military potential of the group, and also exacting revenge for war crimes in Ukraine. “A significant part of the destroyed fighters got military experience in Ukraine, where they carried out hundreds or thousands of war crimes … these crimes should be punished, and Russian war criminals should know that they will never be safe,” said Kuzan.

Ukrainian intelligence has a long reach and Ukraine has a long memory for war crimes committed by the invaders.

On a linguistic note, GUR should realistically be written HUR. The full name of Ukrainian military intelligence is: Головне Управління Розвідки Міністерства Оборони України (Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine). For short, that's Головне Управління Розвідки.

In Russian, Г is pronounced like the English hard G. In Ukrainian, Г is pronounced like a regular English H. There's a separate letter in Ukrainian for English hard G written like this Ґ. But the Soviet Union tried to suppress this letter because its existence was another reminder that Ukrainian is not Russian. So there's been some lingering alphabetic confusion over the use of this letter. But I promise you that it is preferable to transliterate ГУР as HUR.

[awesome-casuallyfamouscollector]

Very good news: Putin's Wagner mercenaries annihilated by the rebels in Mali near the border with Algeria, 2024. Source: Igor Sushko

P.S. Russia is propping up the Mali dictatorship and uses Wagner mercenaries to mass murder civilians...

[kelluinox]

Listening to westerners is becoming increasingly like listening to vatniks and it's frightening and depressing

[metalobrukht]

Oh. That's. That's a video of Wagner slowly killing civilians with axes while they scream with some heroic music on top. Made for gore websites for people to jerk off to. Like the russians always do everywhere they go.

I don't think I can post that video, but I can post this one, where the citizens of Rostov (russia) chant "Wagner":

There's so, so much of these gore videos, not all of them become mainstream. All while the West spits Ukraine in the face time after time after time.

People like to act like it's a show or some parallel universe. Like Ukraine is asking for shit just because.

There are dead fucking people. They died a horrible, horrible death, so many are dying now, so many are tortured, so many are in awful conditions while you drink your coffee and debate politics like its finances or fandom.

You don't feel empathy not because you're cool and edgy and stoic but because you're so fucking unbelievably dumb your brain cannot process a two-step emotion.

Where there's burned down forests and leveled cities people lived just like you live now. Nobody asked their opinion about being invaded.

I know I'm shifting focus from Mali, but that's what I know most about. russia terrorises anywhere it goes. Syria, Ukraine, CAR. Stop salivating on them.

[mask131]

Niger people keep shouting “We want France gone, we want all Westerners gone, we want the White people gone, France is declaring war on us, we are fighting against the colonizers”

... All the while waving Russian flags, having signs explicitely saying “Death to France, long live Russia”, Russia openly saying “We will support Niger as much as we can and we count it as our friend”, and Russian propagandist saying that among the leaders of the Niger revolt you will find “inside men” and “strong allies” of Russia, including people who converted themselves to Orthodox Christianity, Russian flavored... 

If you want France gone, fine, if you want Europe and all colonizers gone, fine - but realize that Russia is also a colonizer and is clearly trying to take over the country from behind-the-scenes, as it did many other African countries and regions. Yes, you are right, Russia is indeed the enemy and opposite of the “West”, of Europe and of the United-States. But it doesn’t mean it is the good guys, heroes or saviors. Russia is “White people” too, and is certainly not free of racism as propagandists love to claim. Russia clearly doesn’t have the good of Niger at heart and only sees it as yet another one of its African pawns in this returning Cold War. 

That’s the sad truth, but every time a European or American force leaves an African region or country, the locals do not have time to breathe that Russians jump onto them and swallow them up. It was in Africa that Wagner grew and bred in its viciousness and massacres... Remember when not too long ago, it was discovered that the Wagner mercenaries were created a mass-grave in Mali, with the clear intention of later accusing the French of having caused the massacre? If you don’t recall or never heard of it, just look around - hopefully the Wagner soldiers were filmed gathering and “burying” the corpses in the fake “mass grave”. But they’ve been at it for a very long time, doing God knows what secretely to convince the various African countries to let themselves be trapped by Russia’s false promises. 

[slaviclore]

so this is a thing that's happening:

kremlin's been sending literal russian flags to africa

"“The Russian flag has become a symbol of resistance in West Africa, affiliated with anti-West and anti-French attitudes,” said Kyle Walter, the head of research at Logically, a technology company that tracked an increase of pro-Russian and anti-French narratives related to Niger in the wake of a coup there this summer."

(the full article at nyt -- i know it's a paid subscription so here is the gist)

the russian flag is popular in west african countries as a protest symbol:

"After military rulers in Niger ousted the civilian president in late July, a wave of pro-Russian sentiment spread throughout the capital, coupled with widespread anger against France, Niger’s former colonizer and a longtime security ally. France’s ambassador to Niger left on Wednesday. French troops positioned in the country are set to depart by the end of the year."

and also because they're fashionable:

"“They just look so cool,” Rédouane Halidou, 21, said as he visited a tiny tailor workshop in a residential neighborhood of Niamey one morning. Two freshly sewn polo shirts were displayed on a table, one in Niger’s green, white and orange, another in Russia’s red, white and blue."

"They also make a catchy political statement. Russia is seen by many young Africans as an anticolonial power, there to help them cast off their colonial past and write a new chapter of national history that has nothing to do with democracy, which many associate with exploitative partnerships with Western countries, corruption and poverty."

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

BRICS calls for UN reform and a new global order

The declaration from the summit of the bloc, which is taking place in Russia, advocates for changes in international organizations, allowing more space for less developed countries. Brazil’s President Lula participated online. Thirteen new countries will be invited to join BRICS as partner states.

The official declaration from the 16th BRICS summit, published on Wednesday (23), reinforces the need for reform of international organizations, especially the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), in order to amplify the voice of less developed countries.

With 43 pages and 134 items, the Kazan Declaration, named after the Russian city where the BRICS summit is taking place, addresses nearly all key topics on the international agenda, such as tackling climate change, managing artificial intelligence, and the ongoing wars around the world.

The declaration emphasizes the need to promote a multipolar world, with multiple centers of power. “Multipolarity can expand opportunities for emerging marketings and developing countries to unlock their constructive potential and enjoy universally beneficial, inclusive and equitable economic globalization and cooperation,” the document reads.

Continue reading.

[city-flag-tournament]

✯ Round 1 ✯ Match 37 ✯

The current flag of Zheleznogorsk, Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russian Federation

Propaganda:

Flag goes hard, refers to city’s use as a soviet town containing secret facilities that didn’t appear on maps. Weapon’s grade plutonium and nuclear power was created there

vs

A past flag of Johannesburg (eGoli), Gauteng Province, South Africa (1970-1997)

Propaganda:

None

Tournament Policies: ✯ Choose the flag that's more meaningful to you! ✯ Be respectful of place names and cultural symbols in your commentary! ✯ If you want to submit propaganda, you may do so at the submission form linked in the pinned post. It will only be included if it is submitted before the next post with that flag is drafted and will be included in all subsequent posts the flag is featured in.

[ohsalome]

Published last week after an extensive human rights fact-finding mission conducted over several months by UN staff in Mali, the report gives an hour by hour account of events during a five-day military operation in Moura in March 2022, giving details of the worst single atrocity associated with the Kremlin-linked Wagner group outside Ukraine.

Investigators from the UN human rights office concluded that there are strong indications that more than 500 people were killed – the majority in extrajudicial killings – by Malian troops and foreign military personnel believed to be from Wagner, a mercenary outfit run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a close ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, which was linked to the massacre by internal messages obtained by the Guardian last year.

The new allegations again underline the extent of human rights abuses blamed on Wagner, which has also operated in at least six other African countries as well as Libya and Syria.

[...]

“These are extremely disturbing findings,” said Volker Türk, the UN high commissioner for human rights. “Summary executions, rape and torture during armed conflict amount to war crimes and could, depending on the circumstances, amount to crimes against humanity.”

[odinsblog]

Executive summary

Since launching its brutal war of aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, the Russian Federation has been locked into a long and costly conflict. Russia has been diplomatically marginalized, subjected to sanctions, and shunned by most of the Western world. Many multinational companies have been forced by international pressure to shutter or sell their Russian operations, and profiting from cooperation with the Russian state is no longer considered acceptable. Russia has found itself in dire need of new allies and resources.

In this environment, the Kremlin-financed Private Military Company Wagner, or Wagner Group, has served as an increasingly important source of revenue for the Russian state. Founded in 2014 to support pro-Russian forces in Donbas, since then Wagner Group has evolved into a complex international network of private military contractors, disinformation campaign infrastruc-ture, and corporate front companies. It has deployed fighters, propaganda and disinformation campaigns, and financing as a proxy for the Russian state in numerous conflicts, from Syria and Libya to Mali, Central African Republic, and beyond

Wagner has most often been described as an independent mercenary group. This status has provided Russia with a thin veil of deniability, particularly in relation to the numerous plausible accusations of murder, rape, torture, and war crimes raised against Wagner fighters. But in reality, Wagner has always operated with the political and material backing of the Russian Federation to advance Russian state interests.

In Africa, Wagner has been deployed in a number of countries across the continent since 2017. In each country it enters, Wagner deploys military trainers, mercenary fighters, and propaganda experts to support anti-democratic regimes, drive instability, and commit human rights abuses. The mercenary group's ostensible provision of "security services" creates a framework for lucrative business contracts for the extraction of natural resources including diamonds, oil, timber, and especially gold.

This report focuses on the Kremlin's 'blood gold': Gold extracted from African countries and laundered into international markets that provides billions in revenue to the Russian state, thereby directly and indirectly financing Russia's war on Ukraine and global hybrid warfare infrastructure.

The Blood Gold Report's analysis suggests that Wagner and Russia have earned more than US$2.5 billion from blood gold since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The report focuses on the case studies of Wagner's blood gold operations in the Central African Republic, Sudan, and Mali. In each of these coun-tries, Russia profits from the blood gold trade in different ways:

In CAR, the mercenary group has been granted exclusive extractive rights for the Ndassima mine, the country's largest gold mine, in return for propping up President Touadera's authoritarian regime. Wagner's Ndassima operations are understood to produce US$290 million of gold annually, while local miners have been pushed aside or murdered by the mercenary group.

In Sudan, through control of a major refinery, Wagner has become the dominant buyer of unprocessed Sudanese gold as well as a major smuggler of processed gold. Russian military transporter flights laden with gold have been identified by Sudanese customs officials. While tracking Sudan's unreported gold market is near impossible, estimates suggest that almost Us$2 billion in gold is smuggled out of the country unreported every year, with 'the Russian Company' in prime position to take advantage.

In Mali, Wagner is paid a monthly retainer - estimated at US $10.8 million per month - to prop up a brutal military junta Meanwhile the junta is in turn dependent on a small number of Western mining companies for the revenue it needs to pay Wagner. Mining companies contributed more than 50% of all tax revenues to the Malian state for 2022. Barrick Gold Corporation, a Canadian listed company and Mali's single biggest tax contributor, paid US$206 million in the first half of 2023 alone.

The junta is increasing its financial demands on gold mining companies. Meanwhile, the four largest gold mining companies (weighted by tax contribution) continue to plan further investments in the country, despite the well-documented abuses of the military junta and growing influence of the Wagner Group.

Wagner's blood gold operations in CAR and Sudan have been subject to sanctions, and the Kremlin-backed mercenaries have developed increasingly complex smuggling routes and corporate subterfuge tactics to move blood gold out of these countries and convert this gold into cash.

In contrast, the Malian blood gold system enables Wagner to remain one degree removed from gold production. Instead, legitimate multinational mining companies convert gold into cash for the Malian military junta without triggering international sanctions.

To secure its position in a target country's political and natural resource extraction landscape, Wagner's African playbook consists of a four-pronged attack on the host country's civic institutions and civilian population - suppressing political opposition, spreading disinformation, silencing free media and terrorising civilians.

The ultimate objective of Wagner's playbook is to increase its clients' dependence on Wagner forces to stay in power, thereby securing a long-term revenue stream for the Kremlin and fostering authoritarianism and instability throughout the region as part of Russia's wider geopolitical strategy to distract and bog down the democratic West.

Since the death of Wagner's leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, the mercenary group has formally come under the control of the Russian State. Yet the Kremlin's focus on Africa, and its blood gold operations, show no signs of changing.

(continue reading)

[too-many-rooks]

Got interested in what S3 shows us of the Scorpia Board and took some photos.

The only named member we have is Razim, who seems to have his 'territory' as the Middle East. We also see that SCORPIA is operating in/has representatives from Russia, China, the USA, (and presumably Julia for Europe?)

Interesting that the Americans seem to share a seat/territory, there's at least one other woman on the board (unlike in the books?) and I wonder if the unnamed Russian representative is a nod to Sarov, since they go out of their way to reference another book?