Russia and the West African countries making up the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) \u2013 Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso \u2013 have pledged \u200cto strengthen military cooperation as jihadist insurgents gain ground in the region, according to a joint statement issued \u200bon Wednesday night after talks in Niger’s \u200bcapital, Niamey.<\/p>\n
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met \u2060counterparts from the three military-led countries, which all \u200bturned to Moscow for support after breaking with \u200bFrance and other Western allies.<\/p>\n
The officials welcomed “growing military and military-technical cooperation”, including assistance from Russia’s paramilitary Africa Corps.<\/p>\n
Russia \u200bconfirmed its intention to continue helping to strengthen \u200bthe armed forces of the AES member states and of \u200ctheir “Unified \u2060Force”, the statement said.<\/p>\n
In April, the regional al Qaeda affiliate and a Tuareg-led separatist group staged attacks across Mali and killed the defence \u200bminister. On Saturday \u200bthey attacked \u2060numerous army posts.<\/p>\n
The statement alleged, without evidence, that “external state actors” including \u200bUkraine and France were involved in attacks \u200bin \u2060the region. Both have denied such allegations.<\/p>\n
Lavrov also visited Ethiopia on his Africa tour. A Russia-Africa \u2060summit \u200bis planned for October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Russia and the West African countries making up the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) \u2013 Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso \u2013 have pledged \u200cto strengthen military cooperation as jihadist insurgents gain ground in the region, according to a joint statement issued \u200bon Wednesday night after talks in Niger’s \u200bcapital, Niamey. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21402,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[2362,1129,27],"tags":[2055,208,114,187,1147,383,373],"class_list":["post-21401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-security","category-west-africa","tag-alliance-of-sahel-states-aes","tag-burkina-faso","tag-ethiopia","tag-mali","tag-moscow","tag-niger","tag-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21401"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21403,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21401\/revisions\/21403"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}