DAKAR, Senegal – As Ukraine’s top diplomat kicked off a 10-day tour across Africa this week, he said he would try to “better explain Ukraine” to his African counterparts and why Ukraine needs of them against Russian aggression.
There appears to be a lot of work to do, based on his first stop, in the West African nation of Senegal.
“I arrived here and I hear: ‘This is not our war, the West is fighting against Russia’; “Russia and Ukraine are one people; and “Russia attacked you because you were going to join NATO,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said, describing a conversation with Senegalese officials.
“The Russian narrative has been very present here,” he said on Tuesday during a 30-minute chat with a group of journalists in Senegal’s capital Dakar. “Now it’s time for Ukrainian truths.”
It remains to be seen whether African leaders and their populations are ready to listen to Ukrainian arguments.
While in recent weeks even the leaders of China and India have expressed concern over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many African countries have refused to condemn it.
One of the reasons is that Russia remains Africa’s largest arms and wheat supplier. The allegiance to Moscow of some African leaders dates back decades, when the Soviet Union backed independence movements from Algeria, North West Africa, Guinea, Angola and Mozambique , in the southeast of the continent.
Ousmane Sene, director of the Dakar-based West Africa Research Center, said many people on the continent had only heard of the independent country of Ukraine a few months ago. .
“The country called Ukraine is on African TV screens because of the Russian invasion,” Sene said. “The only links that many see between Ukraine and Africa are the consequences of the food crisis in the basket of Senegalese consumers,” he added. “And many believe that Russia and Ukraine are to blame for that.”
None of Mr. Kuleba’s predecessors had toured Africa, Mr. Kuleba said on Tuesday, acknowledging that Ukraine had long neglected the continent.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, African countries have been urged to take sides, irritating many of the continent’s leaders who have opted for non-alignment.
“It is perceived in the West as Africa supporting Russia, which is not entirely correct,” said Murithi Mutiga, Africa director at the International Crisis Group.
Instead, Africa “does not want to be the breeding ground for a new cold war,” African Union chief President Macky Sall of Senegal told the United Nations General Assembly last week. last week.
Mr Kuleba said he had “a long and honest conversation” with Mr Sall on Monday.
The Senegalese presidency did not release a statement on the conversation and declined requests for comment.
Mr. Kuleba’s trip to Africa comes more than two months after a similar tour by his Russian counterpart, Sergei V. Lavrov, during which he blamed the food crisis affecting African countries on Western sanctions against Russia.
Even though these sanctions do not target food products, this narrative has spread across Africa and was repeated by Mr. Sall when he met Russian President Vladimir V. Putin in June.
Public opinion on the war in Ukraine varies widely across Africa’s 54 countries and 1.4 billion people. But it was in West Africa, where Mr Kuleba began his tour, that Russia enjoyed the highest public approval rating.
Kuleba said he would warn African countries about Russia’s harmful influence on their societies, reminding them that Russian investment in the continent is overshadowed by that of other countries, including the United States, China and European countries.
What Russia has mostly spread in Africa, he argued, is propaganda and conflict. He cited the examples of Mali and the Central African Republic, where Russian mercenaries killed dozens of civilians, and Burkina Faso, where a close aide to Mr Putin hailed the latest military coup and flags Russians floated when military officers seized power over the weekend. ,
“If the only investment Russia is making in Africa is brainwashing and destroying, and that’s the kind of influence African nations want to see,” Kuleba said, “they are destroying themselves “.