March 15, 2024 (EIRNS)—In his March 13 interview with Dmitry Kiselev, Russian President Vladimir Putin was asked about the accusation from French President Emmanuel Macron that France’s problems with their former colonies in Africa were due to incitement from Russia. Putin responded: “It is not our doing. We are not brainwashing anybody and not inciting any anti-French sentiments there.” Then he commented, “The French President’s sharp and emotional reaction might be explained, among other things, by the developments in some African states.”
However, in the same interview, Putin noted that the former colonies of the Global South have taken into account, and also taken some inspiration, that the West has failed to destroy Russia militarily, economically or politically despite all their huffing and puffing. So, “They associate our struggle for our independence and true sovereignty with their aspirations for their own sovereignty and independent development.” An earlier report by Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova in April 2018 about the British colonialist crimes may help put Macron’s “sharp and emotional reaction” into some context.
Last year, on Aug. 15, Sputnik Africa reported that the MI6 and the British Army’s elite Special Air Service set up a mercenary unit to sabotage infrastructure in Africa and attempt assassinations as needed. Sputnik cited an unnamed “diplomatic-military” source, who described that they “helped handpick the 100-man squad from among fighters with ‘significant combat experience’ against Russia. Ukraine’s Security Service and the Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine’s Defense Ministry (GUR) were directed to assist them, with the would-be mercenaries’ training conducted in Greece and Poland. The squad is reportedly led by Lt. Col. Vitaliy Prashchuk, a veteran GUR officer with reported experience in ‘successful liquidations,’ including combat experience in the Donbass going back to 2014, and assisting covert MI6 missions in Zimbabwe. A chartered civilian ship sailing from the southern Ukrainian port city of Izmail is thought to have taken the squad en route to Sudan, and is expected to arrive in the Sudanese Nile-adjacent city of Omdurman sometime ‘during the second half of August.’”
That same day, the BBC, without denying any of the details provided by Sputnik, simply alleged that three Russian media outlets ran with the story almost immediately after Sputnik did, and offered that as evidence that it was manufactured disinformation. “The release of identical information by three major agencies with a link to the same anonymous source, synchronized to the minute.” Ukrainska Pravda repeated the BBC line.
