{"id":296715,"date":"2020-12-25T16:57:11","date_gmt":"2020-12-25T15:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=296715"},"modified":"2020-12-25T16:57:42","modified_gmt":"2020-12-25T15:57:42","slug":"russian-role-in-central-africa-grows-ahead-of-weekend-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/?p=296715","title":{"rendered":"Russian role in Central Africa grows ahead of weekend vote"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Map showing Central African Republic (CAR)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Russia\u2019s growing role in the volatile Central African Republic was in the spotlight this week, after Moscow dispatched military instructors following a rebel threat to disrupt Sunday\u2019s elections.<\/p>\n

Moscow has led a diplomatic and financial offensive in the deeply troubled nation since 2018 in return for concessions given to its companies to exploit the country\u2019s mineral wealth, especially gold and diamonds.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Russia has sent arms and is an open supporter of incumbent President Faustin Archange Touadera who is on course to win a second term in the legislative and presidential elections.<\/p>\n

Touadera\u2019s government recently signed a military cooperation agreement with Russia, while Moscow opened a military office in the country last year and sent four generals to oversee it.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Growing military presence \u2013<\/h2>\n

The mining concessions have been farmed out to companies associated with Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is very close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n

Prigozhin is suspected to be the main financer of the private Russian security firm Wagner, whose men have been deployed across the country, according to experts, diplomats and non-governmental organisations.<\/p>\n

At least 175 \u201cmilitary instructors\u201d have been sent since 2018 to train the country\u2019s soldiers and ensure Touadera\u2019s safety.<\/p>\n

But a week ago, when three main rebel groups threatened to march on the capital Bangui in what the government said was a coup attempt, Russia sent giant Antonov carriers packed with at least 300 military instructors to help the regular forces.<\/p>\n

Moscow initially denied this but later admitted to dispatching the troops.<\/p>\n

The Russian foreign ministry said it was \u201cseriously concerned that the events of recent days have led to a sharp degradation of the security situation\u201d in the CAR.<\/p>\n

The actions of the three rebel groups had been \u201cwell coordinated and fed from the outside\u201d and aimed at \u201cdisrupting the electoral process,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

Several witnesses and NGOs have reported that the \u201cinstructors\u201d were at the front fighting rebels.<\/p>\n

In the middle of October, armoured vehicles draped in the Russian and CAR flags patrolled the streets of Bangui.<\/p>\n

The Russian instructors have been housed in Berengo, about 60 kilometres (40 miles) from the capital of the former French colony.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Central African Republic is not of great interest to Russia,\u201d said Roland Marchal, a CAR expert at Paris\u2019s prestigious Sciences Po.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut this allows them to needle the French,\u201d with whom they are at odds, especially in Syria and Ukraine, he said.<\/p>\n

\u2013 The war of \u2018trolls\u2019 \u2013<\/h2>\n

A civil war erupted in March 2013 in CAR when mostly Muslim rebels in a coalition called Seleka stormed the capital and removed Francois Bozize, a Christian and former general who had seized power a decade earlier.<\/p>\n

France sent in some 2,000 soldiers under a UN mandate. In 2014, the UN sent its own mission, MINUSCA, and in 2016 elections were held, won by Touadera, a technocrat educated in France.<\/p>\n

France has since redeployed its troops to fight jihadists in the Sahel region.<\/p>\n

\u201cRussia offers a security package without financial debt \u2014 just concessions farmed out to private conglomerates,\u201d said Arnaud Kalika, a Russia expert formerly with French military intelligence.<\/p>\n

In October, US NGO The Sentry published a damning report, decrying \u201ca violent proxy war between pro-French and pro-Russian actors looting the country\u2019s natural wealth\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cForeign powers are interfering in domestic politics and sowing conflict in a competition to strip the country of its treasure and gain geostrategic advantage in this part of the continent,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

Three Russian journalists investigating Wagner\u2019s role in CAR were killed in July 2018. The investigation into their deaths is largely abandoned.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, Facebook pulled down more than 500 accounts, pages and groups from Facebook and Instagram originating from Russia and France targeting 13 African and Middle Eastern countries, including CAR.<\/p>\n

Facebook categorised the foreign interference as coordinated inauthentic behaviour on behalf of a foreign or government entity.<\/p>\n

In CAR, the French- and Russian-linked disinformation groups engaged \u201cwith one another, including by befriending, commenting, and criticising the opposing side for being fake,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

The groups had links to Putin\u2019s ally, Prigozhin, and the French military, it said.<\/p>\n

[AFP]<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Map showing Central African Republic (CAR) Russia\u2019s growing role in the volatile Central African Republic was in the spotlight this week, after Moscow dispatched military instructors following a rebel threat to disrupt Sunday\u2019s elections. Moscow has led a diplomatic and financial offensive in the deeply troubled nation since 2018 in return for concessions given to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":290448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[8750,4805],"class_list":["post-296715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-car","tag-russia"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=296715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/290448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=296715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=296715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=296715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}