Wow! What a read. I have always been interested in Africa. I looked at the Angola and Congo wars a few years ago. White mercenaries, etc. The dogs of war!
I had the opportunity to talk with a Russian rumor mill guy over some drinks.
According to him:
1: Various factions within Niger were feuding over resources. For such feuds, you often threaten people with a foreign backer. There were a couple of rounds of escalation in terms of internal threats before anything surfaced. The nominally pro Russian faction threatened far more then they were even remotely authorized to do, but it worked in that the nominally pro French faction folded.
2: Russia is in Niger to reverse-troll France a bit, and not make a loss financially while performing the trolling. They are very open about having zero ambition or capabilitiy to run or rule Niger. This makes them fairly acceptable to a lot of different power brokers in Niger. And there is a degree of completely honest self interest, if the west has to pay fair prices for Nigers resources, Russias resource stock also becomes more lucrative.
3: One very polite embassy was send as an envoy to Nigeria, informing them that while France is out, Russia is by no means in, and that Russia has zero intentions of replacing France, and that the French getting taken down a peg is well within what Russia thinks is Nigerias interest.
After all, less western influence in westafrica means more Nigerian influence.
Russia will obviously try to make "Nigeria more sovereign", and Nigeria will obviously interpret in "sovereignity" as "lets get paid by as many sides as possible for doing what we were going to do anyway", which is completely fine.
TLDR: Russias sees itself as having removed Niger from Frances sphere of influence. They have no ambition, at least in the forseeable future, of adding it to theirs, and they perhaps anticipate friction between Lagos and Washington over who of these fills this vacuum. Russia would clearly prefer for Lagos to fill it, given that Washington is the main adversary. France failed because its rule was even more brittle then anyone, Russia included, realized.
Exceptional article, thanks, more than a "post", it's a real history lesson.
Wow! What a read. I have always been interested in Africa. I looked at the Angola and Congo wars a few years ago. White mercenaries, etc. The dogs of war!
I had the opportunity to talk with a Russian rumor mill guy over some drinks.
According to him:
1: Various factions within Niger were feuding over resources. For such feuds, you often threaten people with a foreign backer. There were a couple of rounds of escalation in terms of internal threats before anything surfaced. The nominally pro Russian faction threatened far more then they were even remotely authorized to do, but it worked in that the nominally pro French faction folded.
2: Russia is in Niger to reverse-troll France a bit, and not make a loss financially while performing the trolling. They are very open about having zero ambition or capabilitiy to run or rule Niger. This makes them fairly acceptable to a lot of different power brokers in Niger. And there is a degree of completely honest self interest, if the west has to pay fair prices for Nigers resources, Russias resource stock also becomes more lucrative.
3: One very polite embassy was send as an envoy to Nigeria, informing them that while France is out, Russia is by no means in, and that Russia has zero intentions of replacing France, and that the French getting taken down a peg is well within what Russia thinks is Nigerias interest.
After all, less western influence in westafrica means more Nigerian influence.
Russia will obviously try to make "Nigeria more sovereign", and Nigeria will obviously interpret in "sovereignity" as "lets get paid by as many sides as possible for doing what we were going to do anyway", which is completely fine.
TLDR: Russias sees itself as having removed Niger from Frances sphere of influence. They have no ambition, at least in the forseeable future, of adding it to theirs, and they perhaps anticipate friction between Lagos and Washington over who of these fills this vacuum. Russia would clearly prefer for Lagos to fill it, given that Washington is the main adversary. France failed because its rule was even more brittle then anyone, Russia included, realized.
An exhaustive and praiseworthy lesson in nuance.