Russia's Growing Influence in Africa: What's Happening? #shorts #news #russia #peace #ukraine
War ‘tour’, football and graffiti: How Russia is trying to influence Africa
Teenage footballers listen to the Russian national anthem before a match. Nearby, artists paint Russian President Vladimir Putin’s portrait on a wall during a graffiti festival.
Welcome to Burkina Faso, one of the African nations where Russia is boosting its operations to gain influence.
Evidence found by the BBC shows that Russia is using media and cultural initiatives to attract African journalists, influencers, and students while spreading misleading information.
These events are being promoted by African Initiative, a newly founded Russian media organisation which defines itself as an “information bridge between Russia and Africa”. It inherited structures previously set up by the dismantled Wagner mercenary group and is believed by experts to have links with the Russian security services.
Registered in September 2023, a month after Wagner’s leader Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash, African Initiative has welcomed former employees from his disbanded enterprises.
Its efforts have been particularly focused on the three military-run countries of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.
Following recent coups, these West African nations have distanced themselves from Western allies like France, criticising their failed interventions against jihadist groups and colonial legacies. They have instead pivoted towards Russia.
Alongside cultural events on the ground, African Initiative maintains a news website with stories in Russian, English, French, and Arabic, as well as a video channel and five Telegram channels, one of which has almost 60,000 subscribers.
Some of the Telegram channels were “recycled” from older ones which had been set up by groups linked to Wagner. They were the first to promote the Russian Defence Ministry's paramilitary group Africa Corps, which has effectively replaced the military wing of Wagner in West Africa.
Pro-Kremlin narratives and misleading information, especially about the United States, are rife.
Stories on the African Initiative’s website suggest without evidence that the US is using Africa as a production and testing ground for bio-weapons, building on long-discredited Kremlin disinformation campaigns.
One story echoes the Kremlin’s unsubstantiated claims about US bio-labs being relocated from Ukraine to Africa. Another maintains without evidence that US bio-labs on the continent are increasing, claiming that “under the guise of research and humanitarian projects, the African continent is becoming a testing ground for the Pentagon”, suggesting that secretive biological experiments are being conducted.
While Prigozhin’s propaganda efforts targeted mainly France, African Initiative “targets Americans to a greater degree,” says researcher Jedrzej Czerep, head of the Middle East and Africa Programme at the Polish Institute of International Affairs. “It’s far more anti-American.”
In June, a group of bloggers and reporters from eight countries were invited for a seven-day “press tour” of the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. The trip was organised by Russian state media and Western-sanctioned Russian officials, and the journalists visited African Initiative’s headquarters in Moscow.
"Africa wasn’t getting much information [about the war]," Raymond Agbadi, a Ghanaian blogger and scientist who studied in Russia and who participated in the “press tour”, told the BBC. "Whatever information we were getting was not convincing enough for us to understand what the war was really about.”
American influencer Jackson Hinkle, a vocal supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin who has spread multiple false claims about Ukraine, was also on the visit.
After visiting Moscow, the journalists travelled 1,250km (780 miles) to the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol in the Donetsk region. Then they went to towns in the Zaporizhzhia region – all areas which were captured by Russia early in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Throughout the visit, the reporters were accompanied by Russian officials and travelled with the Russian military in vehicles marked with the Z sign – the symbol of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
For more detail go to article link below
Article link : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg3lky7z7eo
https://www.facebook.com/TOPUPINFOMEDIA
https://www.youtube.com/@TOPUPInfoMedia
https://www.tiktok.com/@topupmedia
https://www.instagram.com/topupinfomedialatestnews/
Source : Google news(BBC NEWS)
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War ‘tour’, football and graffiti: How Russia is trying to influence Africa
Teenage footballers listen to the Russian national anthem before a match. Nearby, artists paint Russian President Vladimir Putin’s portrait on a wall during a graffiti festival.
Welcome to Burkina Faso, one of the African nations where Russia is boosting its operations to gain influence.
Evidence found by the BBC shows that Russia is using media and cultural initiatives to attract African journalists, influencers, and students while spreading misleading information.
These events are being promoted by African Initiative, a newly founded Russian media organisation which defines itself as an “information bridge between Russia and Africa”. It inherited structures previously set up by the dismantled Wagner mercenary group and is believed by experts to have links with the Russian security services.
Registered in September 2023, a month after Wagner’s leader Yevgeny Prigozhin died in a plane crash, African Initiative has welcomed former employees from his disbanded enterprises.
Its efforts have been particularly focused on the three military-run countries of Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso.
Following recent coups, these West African nations have distanced themselves from Western allies like France, criticising their failed interventions against jihadist groups and colonial legacies. They have instead pivoted towards Russia.
Alongside cultural events on the ground, African Initiative maintains a news website with stories in Russian, English, French, and Arabic, as well as a video channel and five Telegram channels, one of which has almost 60,000 subscribers.
Some of the Telegram channels were “recycled” from older ones which had been set up by groups linked to Wagner. They were the first to promote the Russian Defence Ministry's paramilitary group Africa Corps, which has effectively replaced the military wing of Wagner in West Africa.
Pro-Kremlin narratives and misleading information, especially about the United States, are rife.
Stories on the African Initiative’s website suggest without evidence that the US is using Africa as a production and testing ground for bio-weapons, building on long-discredited Kremlin disinformation campaigns.
One story echoes the Kremlin’s unsubstantiated claims about US bio-labs being relocated from Ukraine to Africa. Another maintains without evidence that US bio-labs on the continent are increasing, claiming that “under the guise of research and humanitarian projects, the African continent is becoming a testing ground for the Pentagon”, suggesting that secretive biological experiments are being conducted.
While Prigozhin’s propaganda efforts targeted mainly France, African Initiative “targets Americans to a greater degree,” says researcher Jedrzej Czerep, head of the Middle East and Africa Programme at the Polish Institute of International Affairs. “It’s far more anti-American.”
In June, a group of bloggers and reporters from eight countries were invited for a seven-day “press tour” of the Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine. The trip was organised by Russian state media and Western-sanctioned Russian officials, and the journalists visited African Initiative’s headquarters in Moscow.
"Africa wasn’t getting much information [about the war]," Raymond Agbadi, a Ghanaian blogger and scientist who studied in Russia and who participated in the “press tour”, told the BBC. "Whatever information we were getting was not convincing enough for us to understand what the war was really about.”
American influencer Jackson Hinkle, a vocal supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin who has spread multiple false claims about Ukraine, was also on the visit.
After visiting Moscow, the journalists travelled 1,250km (780 miles) to the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol in the Donetsk region. Then they went to towns in the Zaporizhzhia region – all areas which were captured by Russia early in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Throughout the visit, the reporters were accompanied by Russian officials and travelled with the Russian military in vehicles marked with the Z sign – the symbol of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
For more detail go to article link below
Article link : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg3lky7z7eo
https://www.facebook.com/TOPUPINFOMEDIA
https://www.youtube.com/@TOPUPInfoMedia
https://www.tiktok.com/@topupmedia
https://www.instagram.com/topupinfomedialatestnews/
Source : Google news(BBC NEWS)
Power by: invideo
If you found this video helpful, please like and
Subscribe to our channel