Russia’s success in the war will become an example to follow in other countries.

Analysts believed that the outcome of the war in Ukraine “will have profound consequences for Russian influence in the world”, and if Russia, “defying international conventions”, achieves a “successful result”, other countries, in particular African ones, will follow.

Russia’s justification for the February 24, 2021 invasion of Ukraine “could be profoundly destabilizing,” said Joseph Sigle, director of the African Center for Strategic Studies (ACSS), a Washington-based think tank funded by the US Congress. “Why shouldn’t Nigeria gobble up neighboring countries? Why shouldn’t Sudan expand its borders?”

“What happens in Ukraine will have serious consequences for Russian influence in Africa and around the world. In addition to territorial issues between Ukraine and Russia, Moscow is challenging the world order and international conventions. in other countries, as well as to enable other countries to follow this example, ”the researcher emphasized.

According to the director of the ACSS, Russia intends to stir up trouble by “guaranteeing its interests, but at the same time trying to create a threat to the interests of the West.”

As an example, Siegle points to Moscow’s attempt “to consolidate its presence in the North African region, including the deployment of a naval base in Libya”, an intention that has been repeatedly reported for at least a decade and a half, but which the West has never stopped. granting a loan.

A naval base in Libya — and another in Sudan that has also been in the news several times over the years, at least since the 2019 ouster of former dictator Omar al-Bashir in a Moscow-backed military coup — will Russia is in a position to disrupt world maritime navigation through the Suez Canal, through which 12% of world trade and 90% of oil supplied to North America and Southeast Asia annually pass, Joseph Sigle emphasized.

More specifically, and with significant changes over the past year, is the instability that has arisen in the Sahel, which, according to the same researcher, “represents a serious concern for Europe due to migration” – no less central to the dispute over influence between Russia and the West in Libya, and “the activities of violent Islamic extremist groups.”

“There are several African coup leaders who have received support from Russia,” namely in Mali and Burkina Faso, in addition to Sudan, and “Moscow has managed to increase its effective influence in Africa over the past year through unconventional means,” Ziegl points out.

“They do it through what I call asymmetric means, promoting or defending authoritarian African leaders. Russia offers them protection, politically sponsors them in the UN, and at the same time it [paramilitares privadas] from the Wagner Group to several of these countries,” he added.

Paul Nantoulia, also an ACSS researcher, considers the presence of the Wagner Group in countries such as the Central African Republic, Mali, Burkina Faso, Libya, and other unconfirmed ones such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan, with this in mind. a threat to the “African security architecture of peace and security”.

“Structural changes in the international system or in a subsystem can be caused by violence, and this is what the Wagner group is doing in the Sahel,” Nantoulia warned.

Two countries in the region, Mali and Burkina Faso, were in the news last year due to the expulsion from their territories of French troops involved in Operation Barkhane, in the first case, and in Operation Sabre, this Sunday in Campo -Bila was lowered the French flag. Zagre, in Camboinsen, on the outskirts of Ouagadougou – in the second, at the opening of borders to the presence of the Wagner group and the launch of agreements on military cooperation with Moscow.

Mali has also been in the news for making things more difficult and reducing the room for maneuver for the United Nations mission in the country, MINUSMA. In December, Burkina Faso expelled the country’s UN coordinator, Italian diplomat Barbara Manzi, whom she described as “persona non grata.”

“This is a region highly destabilized by Islamic extremism, which for almost a decade has been fought not only by French and other actors, but by African ones, such as the combined forces of the G5 Sahel,” funded by the European Union and originally formed by Mauritania, Chad, Burkina Faso, Niger and until May, Mali, which also abandoned it – and whose structure was destroyed last year under the direct influence of the Wagner Group and the indirect influence of Russia, said Paul Nantoulia.

For the researcher, “it is important to emphasize that the Wagner group dangerously threatens the African peace and security architecture of the African Union (AU) and the United Nations.”

“African states benefit from an architecture of peace and security within the AU that allows them to deal with instability issues within their borders after following certain procedures for receiving assistance and requesting the deployment of forces.”

According to Nantoul, “It took 25 years for African countries to build an African architecture of peace and security, which is still weak, but is developing, and the Wagner group is destroying it.”