Ukraine cosying up to Africa in the midst of war

As things stand, there seems to be no end in sight for the protracted Ukraine-Russian war that has held Europe in a grip of uncertainty and instability for the past two years.

Despite defending its territories against Russian aggression that has plunged their economy into a crisis, Ukraine continues to widen its diplomatic reach especially in the continent of Africa where it has a presence in close to 20 countries.

This past week Ukraine opened doors to a new Diplomatic Mission in Botswana’s capital Gaborone. The Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Maksym SUBKH who was in Gaborone for the official opening sat down with Botswana Guardian’s Isaac Pheko for a wide-ranging interview on the current state of the Ukrainian war and their growing diplomatic relations with African states.

SUBKH is optimistic that the growing relations between African states and Ukraine will only continue to grow even beyond the current war with Russia. Botswana as one of the countries that have condemned Russian aggression against Ukraine from the onset stands to benefit in these bilateral relations.

However, it is not only SADC countries that are growing relations with the European state as they have a much bigger scope of focus in Africa. The first port of call is the envisaged Ukraine-Africa summit, which SUBKH still believes to be in the pipeline.

“Our government and President Zelenskyy has always been talking about the need of building personal contacts between Africa and Ukraine, both on the level of societies, peoples and on the level of top officials.

“But I would just reiterate the eagerness and willingness of our president to hold such a meeting in one of the African countries,” SUBKH said from the newly-opened Embassy in Gaborone.

“And I had extensive talks and consultations on that issue with our partners here in Botswana and other capitals about the ways how we can implement this project.

“And we will be very happy to listen and to hear from our African partners their points of view and their recommendations on the suitable time and place for such a meeting.

“The meeting will focus not only on the Russian aggression against Ukraine, but also touch upon many other important issues such as how to increase and how to enforce African nations’ resilience in the face of the climate change, food shortage, and healthcare issues.”

SUBKH said the Ukrainian president will be talking about the prospects of enhancing cooperation in the trade and economic sphere and special attention will be paid to the necessity of broadening the legal basis between Ukraine and African countries.

He said it will be also good for Africans to get an opportunity to deliver the messages they see fit to deliver their own vision about how do they see the ways to put an end to the Russian aggression, first.

Furthermore, SUBKH said African states will receive and get a chance to transmit the information about their needs. What do they expect from Ukraine? “In other words, that is going to be a good and very appropriate...be it from the SADC region or a new representative from another region could be also added to the meeting. And we can call it either a summit or we can call it a high-panel meeting on the level of presidents.

“So, the main issue for us is not the naming or the label of that meeting. What we care about most is the content and the deliverables of that summit. And we will be working hard on that.”

So far SUBKH said his ministry has been given green light to continue dialogue with the African countries on the level of SADC and other regions and other regional organisations to find and to agree upon a suitable timeframe and destination to organise such a summit. Since the opening of the Botswana Mission during the last week, Ukraine had five, and before that they now have 16 in total, but they expect to have 20 Embassies distributed across all Africa.

Russian Misinformation in Africa

SUBK expressed concern over the rapid growth of Russian influence in the African continent.

“They have enormous resources, both financial and technical, and we are witnessing that Russia, during the last year or so, is dominating in the informational sphere, both in Africa and in the global south generally. So, we made ourselves determined to confront these destructive Russian activities in the region.

“It's bad when we see that Russia is simply spreading fake news diluting the mass media of the region. Russia is preparing the soil for itself to disseminate irrelevant information about the nature of its invasion to Ukraine and the atrocities that Russia commits on our soil.”

SUKH continued: “We've been telling our partners many times that they must be very vigilant and they need to be concerned and worried about the Russian military expansion, especially in the Sahel region.

“Because from what we see is that the presence of Russia does not in any way guarantee the stability of those countries, rather the opposite. So, Russia, by being present, continues to destabilise the political situation, providing help and security for the ruling elites, which came to power by illegal ways and through unconstitutional coup d'etats.”

SUBKH expressed concern over Russian tactics that have been recently witnessed in the African continent arguing that this is unacceptable and these actions and activities of Russia and its military and paramilitary groups such as Wagner and others should be internationally condemned in the strongest terms.

“And we do not want to see other countries influenced by misinformation in the region. They (Russia) have enormous resources, both financial and technical, and we are witnessing that Russia, during the last year or so, is

dominating in the informational sphere, both in Africa and in the global south generally.

“So, we made ourselves determined to confront these destructive Russian activities in the region.”

Resistance against Russian aggression

The Minister said their armed forces are still holding on and fighting as Russia's war against his country is still ongoing, with the aggressor trying to occupy more and more territories all the time. SUBKH said Ukraine finds itself in the frontlines with their armed forces struggling fearlessly not to let Russia advance on the ground from the other side as Putin’s army continues shelling their cities and villages with the most sophisticated types of missiles - cruise and ballistic missiles and drones.

“It's very bad to see that there are some countries decided to enter as accomplices in Russia’s aggression against Ukraine so we have condemned on many occasions Iran's involvement in the war by supplying Russia with shaheed type drones made in Iran.

“It's unacceptable to see that North Korean Republic is also helping Russia by providing it with ballistic missiles. So, the aggression against my country is ongoing, as I said, and it brings a lot of destruction to the economy, to the critical infrastructure.

“About 80 percent of our power generation facilities have been destroyed. Russia is targeting power generating stations, coal stations, also thermal stations. It is targeting our grain siloes, stores as well our water storages, port infrastructure, railway infrastructure.

“They are basically trying to destruct and to harm the critical infrastructure of the country, leading to a collapse of the state.”

SUBKH highlighted the philosophy and objective that Russian is following on their invasion on Ukraine.

“We currently urging our allies and partners to provide us with the maximum support in terms of transferring most advanced air defence systems such as Patriot to be able to shut down the rockets which are being launched against us.

“Second, we also anticipate that our allies would provide us quickly with the F-16 planes that we also require to close the skies over Ukraine and to minimise the harm from the shellings that Russians are committing day and night,” he said.

Protecting Ukrainian territories

Ukraine deems the invasion on its territories as an existential threat, hence it sees no compromises or any options left than to defend itself against Russia.

“We are determined to liberate our territories. We will not accept any concessions in regards to our territories. That’s what Russia needs. Russia is now trying to persuade and to convince the international community that it seeks peace and it seeks negotiations.

“But in fact, what Russia seeks and what it needs is to get a pause, to freeze the conflict. They seek to remain present and take control over the territories that have been already temporarily occupied. And after that, to use this pause to regroup and to regain the momentum.”

He continued: “They plan to continue their crawling occupation of Ukrainian territories and president Zelensky said it very clear and on numerous occasions that the fall of the Ukrainian state would mean the collapse of other European nations afterwards especially small countries probably former USSR republics or nowadays Baltic states which are less protected despite these countries being members of the NATO.

“However, we believe and we think that Putin would not stop at the border of Ukraine with the European Union and will continue his invasion of other countries so Europeans are very aware of that and that's what explains the dedication and the devotion of European leaders to helping Ukraine militarily, humanitarian, and economically.”

Stopping the war

To stop this war immediately, there are several options. The first one is that Putin must give an order to his troops to pull back and to withdraw from Ukraine.

“That's the easiest way how the war can be ended. The second option is that Russia must abide by the decision of the future summit which is going to be concluded in Switzerland this June about the peace plan that was introduced by Ukraine called Peace Formula, which has 10 major pillars, which describe how Ukraine sees the end of the war and how does it sees the peace being achieved in a way that guarantees not only a temporary truce but a long-lasting just and comprehensive peace for Ukraine”.

A third option which seems most relevant for the current state, he said, is that “we continue our fight with the understanding and realisation that the casualties and death toll may rise dramatically.

“We are talking about our land and our identity so when it comes to national identity nothing can be more valuable than territories.”

Joining NATO is inevitable

“We are very close to the EU accession, but after the full-scale invasion in February 2022, one of the goals was not to let Ukraine become a member of the EU, despite all the statements that the Russians are doing that they are not against that”.

SUBKH continued: “They do not want us to use our right to choose the Euro Atlantic integration as our strategic path which is enshrined in our constitution so joining NATO is not an option. Becoming a member of NATO is in our constitution it is the choice of our people. It's our right and Russia and nobody else has the right to tell us and lecture us on what to do, it’s our sovereign right but now the priority is to become a member of the European Union the membership of the NATO is still on the table and we and our NATO partners confirmed that just recently that the future of Ukraine is in NATO.”