Energy and military bases

Senior researcher at the Institute for Foreign Policy Stephen Blank writes in The Hill about the African vector of Russian foreign policy:

“Algeria enjoys its strategic position in the circumstances. On the one hand, the country signed a number of major contracts with Italy. On the other hand, Algeria suspended cooperation with Spain after Madrid announced the support of Morocco’s position instead of Algeria in a dispute regarding Western Sahara. Algeria relations with France are also quite tense. Obviously, the North African state will continue to use the advantage in the field of energy resources to pursue its interests in the conflict with Morocco, which is a long -standing ally of the United States and the importer of Israeli weapons. Therefore, Algeria enlisted the support of Iran, and in one article dedicated to his foreign policy, the official position of the state was characterized as “ hatred in relation to Israel ”.

This regional challenge fell into Moscow, which with enviable constancy improved its relationship with Algeria for several years, taking advantage of the current situation in Western Sahara. The Kremlin generally knows how to benefit from ethno-territorial conflicts well.

Russia and Algeria have concluded a number of contracts in the field of procurement of weapons and energy resources. The armies of the two countries conducted joint military exercises on the border with Morocco, where the tasks of “ searching, detecting and destroying” criminal groups were worked out.

<...> Algeria participated in financing the agreement between Russia and Mali, which opened the way for the deployment of the Wagner PMC since 2011. According to the official statistics of Algeria, the country is the second largest trade partner in Russia in Africa. It also occupies the 3rd line among the largest importers of Russian weapons in the world, and Russian weapons are more than 50 percent of the Arsenal of the Algerian army.

<...> Moscow’s participation in Algeria’s affairs, and through it - in the region south of Sakhara, gave Russia a number of opportunities not only to promote the anti -Western agenda in Africa, but also to say that international support for the Kremlin’s actions against Ukraine is much higher than it really is. Russian expansion in Africa also indicates an unreasonable neglect of the West by the African direction of foreign policy for many years. Thus, it is not surprising that Western countries are now trying to catch up on the African continent. However, in addition to decisive actions in Africa, we need to take a more wary position.

Ultimately, the goals of Moscow in Algeria and in other countries of Africa are to create marine and aviation bases throughout the Mediterranean and in nearby waters, not excluding Algeria. In addition to increasing the influence of Russia in countries where Russian military facilities will be located, their main goal will be to contain NATO not only in the Black Sea region, but also in the Mediterranean further. For example, the Russian Foreign Minister, having visited states such as Eritrea and Angola this year, openly discussed the possibility of opening military bases in these countries in order to jeopardize the interests of Western countries in international waters. ”