Moscow will continue supporting the emerging Sahel Group Five forces (G5 Sahel - Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad and Mauritania) by supplying weapons, appropriate equipment and training peacekeepers to counter the terrorist threat, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday at a news conference following talks with Chadian Foreign Minister Mahamat Zene Cherif.
"We spoke about the steps Russia is taking to support the emerging forces of the Sahel Five. The process of their formation is now coming to an end. We will continue supporting this process by supplying our weapons and relevant equipment and personnel training, including the training of peacekeepers," pointed out the head of the diplomatic mission.
According to the Minister, Moscow and N'Djamena have a common position that only through "the national dialogue, which must involve all the main political forces of each society, we can solve the situation of normalization in this or that country". "At the same time mobilizing all available possibilities of both Africans themselves and the international community to fight terrorist groups," Lavrov added.
As the Minister noted, the Russian side considers it fundamentally important "to help the African continent get rid of this evil [terrorist activity], get rid of other threats and challenges, including drug trafficking and other forms of organized crime." "In doing so, we will always advocate that Africans themselves determine how to solve their problems. And the international community through the UN Security Council and other structures should provide moral, political, legal and material support," he concluded.
Russia-Africa Summit
Lavrov also said that the partners from Chad supported the second Russia-Africa Summit scheduled for the fall of 2022.
In November, the head of the secretariat of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum, Russian Ambassador-at-Large Oleg Ozerov said that many countries on the African continent had expressed their desire to participate. The summit is expected to discuss specific proposals for the development of cooperation between Russia and Africa.
The first Russia-Africa Summit was held in Sochi on October 23-24, 2019, co-chaired by Russian and Egyptian Presidents Vladimir Putin and Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The second summit, scheduled for fall 2022, is to be hosted by Africa.
Sahel Group
The Sahel Group of Five was established in February 2014 to maintain security in the Western Sahel and coordinate the fight against international terrorism. The headquarters of the G5 secretariat is located in the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott. G5 member countries created a joint army force in 2015 to fight terrorist groups in the Sahel region.
The Sahel region has now become the epicenter of the Islamist terrorist threat to West Africa. With the collapse of statehood in Libya after the fall of Muammar Gaddafi's regime in late 2011, armed Islamist groups invaded Mali and northern Burkina Faso from there. Gradually, they began to expand their areas of operation, adding fighters from North Africa and the Near and Middle East to their ranks. The result was an increase in terrorist attacks and casualties among soldiers and civilians.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
Photo: Creative Commons
Based on materials from TASS