A Less Emotional Point of View

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

In Canada, reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reached a fever pitch. It almost feels as if we ourselves are at war with Russia. The non-NATO countries of the world, outside Europe and North America, have a less emotional point of view.

Many African countries have a longstanding affinity with Russia stretching back to the Cold War: some political and military leaders studied there, and trade links have grown. And in recent years a growing number of countries have contracted with Russian mercenaries and bought ever-greater quantities of Russian weapons.

From Mali, Sudan, the Central African Republic (CAR), Mozambique and elsewhere, Russia has been getting more involved, often militarily, with help fighting rebels or jihadist militants.

At the UN Security Council, which met Feb. 25 to vote on a resolution condemning Russia’s action, Gabon, Ghana and Kenya, currently non-permanent members, made their opposition to Russian action in Ukraine very clear.

The African Union has expressed “extreme concern” but was muted in its criticism of Russia.

As a member of BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), the world’s five emerging economies, South Africa was relatively silent when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014. However, the South African government has urged restraint this time. South Africa has called on Moscow to withdraw its forces from Ukraine but said it still held out hope for a negotiated solution.

But at the United Nations General Assembly on March 2, South Africa was among 25 African countries that declined to join the vote denouncing Russian aggression: 17 African countries abstained, seven didn’t vote at all and one, Eritrea, voted against it. Some 25 African nations, including Nigeria,  supported the resolution.

Some argue that Putin’s attack on Ukraine is justified because of the West’s antics in Africa and, more recently, in Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Russia is our friend through and through,” Lindiwe Zulu, South Africa’s minister of social development, who studied in Moscow during the apartheid years, remarked. “We are not about to denounce that relationship that we have always had.”

CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadéra has been reported as backing Russia’s decision to recognise the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states. And the deputy leader of the Sudanese junta, Mohamed Hamdan Dagolo, led a delegation to Moscow in a sign of closer ties between the two countries.

Mali’s Prime Minister Choguel Maiga confirmed that his country has signed military co-operation agreements with Russia. But he denied that the controversial Russian private military company, the Wagner Group, was involved. This Russian help in Mali, along with a reported offer to the military government in Burkina Faso, is part of a larger pattern.

One of Vladimir Putin’s staunchest defenders is a powerful figure in Uganda, Lt. Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, son of Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni. “The majority of mankind (that are non-white) support Russia’s stand in Ukraine” he tweeted March 1.

“When the USSR parked nuclear armed missiles in Cuba in 1962, the West was ready to blow up the world over it. Now when NATO does the same they expect Russia to do differently.”

In 2014, following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the international sanctions which followed, there came a sharp deterioration in relations with the United States and the European Union. Faced with the threat of international isolation, Moscow started the search for new allies.

A 2019 summit in the Russian city of Sochi was attended by delegates from more than 50 African countries, including 43 heads of state. President Vladimir Putin addressed the leaders, appealing to a history of backing liberation movements and pledging to boost trade and investment.

A 2021 report on perspectives of Africa-Russia co-operation, published by Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, pointed out that African countries have tended to be neutral when it comes to Russia’s actions in the past.

African sympathies for Ukraine were also diluted by reports of Ukrainian border guards pushing African students living in Ukraine to the ends of long lines as they attempted to leave the country, raising a furor over discrimination.

President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria, which has 4,000 students in Ukraine, decried the reports. The African Union called it “shockingly racist and in breach of international law.”

Some African Americans have also noted the differing coverage of the war as compared to non-European conflicts. Nikole Hannah-Jones, a journalism professor at Howard University in Washington, claimed that the incessant media coverage of the war is tied to the ethnicity of the Ukrainians.

She pointed to a BBC News report highlighting the “European people with blond hair and blue eyes” being killed by Russia’s all-out assault. “Many of us see the racialized analysis and language,” she tweeted March 6.