Russia begins military cooperation with the DRC

Russia is setting up in the DRC, as it has done in the Central African Republic, by starting a military cooperation with Kinshasa.

To do this, Kinshasa exhumed this week a convention of almost twenty years and never implemented, until now. But the ultimate goal is economic and commercial cooperation in the mining, energy and agriculture sectors.

For two days, the deputies of the Defence Committee of the National Assembly have worked on a military cooperation convention dating from 1999.

A text that provides for the delivery of weapons by Russia, war materials “and other specific equipment”, “advisory missions”, or the training of military specialists in Russian schools. Which will be expected to be discussed in plenary shortly.

One would ask, why bring out this 19-year-old convention? At the time, President Laurent Desiré Kabila was at war against the rebels of the RCD. “But when he came to power two years later, his son Joseph Kabila wanted a break with his father and opened up in the west, France and Belgium, for example, analyses a Congolese policy. Today we are in a new paradigm, a showdown with the West, and as Russia is interested in Africa, we see in CAR, we “update” an old file.”

Russia would enter through the military. But as in the CAR, Moscow is eyeing the basement, as evidenced by the report of the meeting between the two Foreign Ministers Lavrov and She Okitundu in Moscow in March 2017.

“They pointed out the good prospects of partnership in the mining sector, energy and agriculture,” said the Russian statement.

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