Russia is renewing its efforts to destabilise European countries and pose strategic threats to NATO members, a report has found.
The Kremlin is expanding ties with African and Middle Eastern states, displacing Western partnerships, to create what the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) called a “renewed Russian colonialism” – a group of nations that “actively seek to assist Russia” and become subordinate to it.
Russia-controlled Wagner now offering advice to African regimes
Former Wagner Group mercenary units in Africa have come under the control the Russian military and are now offering “regime survival package” to authoritarian governments in countries like Mali and the Central African Republic, read the RUSI report.
“As the war in Ukraine protracts, Russia has an interest in creating crises further afield,” authors Jack Watling, Oleksandr Danylyuk and Nick Reynolds wrote, pointing to the Balkans in particular.
“Russia also has an active interest in destabilising Ukraine’s partners, and with a slew of elections forthcoming across Europe there is a wide range of opportunities to exacerbate polarisation.”
Russian special services have increased disinformation campaigns in NATO member states, the Ukrainian Centre for Combating Disinformation has said.
RUSI, a UK-based thinktank, drew from documents obtained from Russian secret services and interviews with official bodies in Ukraine and some European states.
Russia taking advantage of ‘bitterness’ towards US
The authors said Russia’s efforts to build relationships in Africa and the Middle East will be bolstered by a “strong and bitter sense” that the US and NATO act differently in Ukraine than they do in conflicts in Gaza and Tigray, Ethiopia.
It has left “many on the continent perceiving a gap between Western rhetoric about values and the values practiced by those who have, for so long, imposed constraints on the policies of African states to enforce values-based norms”, the report said.
@Sky News