COTONOU: French President Emmanuel Macron, on a visit to Benin on Wednesday, branded Russia “one of the last imperial colonial powers” for its invasion of Ukraine.

“Russia launched an offensive against Ukraine. It’s a territorial war, the likes of which we thought had disappeared from European soil.

“It’s a war from the early 20th, even the 19th century,” Macron said on the second leg of a trip to Africa to reset France’s relations with the continent, where many nations are former French colonies.

“I speak on a continent that has suffered colonial imperialism,” Macron added.

Delivering the broadside at a news conference with Benin President Patrice Talon, Macron said “Russia is one of the last imperial colonial powers”, because it had decided to “invade a neighbouring country to defend its interests”.

Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, triggering a war that has killed thousands, displaced millions and sparked fears of a global food crisis over blocked grain exports.

Macron accused the Kremlin of launching “a new type of hybrid world war”.

“It decided that information, energy and food were military instruments placed at the service” of the war in Ukraine, he said.

Macron said he wanted to “describe what’s happening today in the baldest terms”.

He accused Russia of disruption through “disinformation”, describing it as “one of the countries to make the most forceful use of instruments of propaganda”. He referred specifically to the television channels Russia Today and Sputnik.

Simultaneous Russian tour

Russia has cut back on gas deliveries to western Europe and Ukrainian grain has remained blocked in ports since the start of the war, driving a surge in global prices for energy and cereals.

Russia’s energy giant Gazprom slashed its gas exports to Europe via the Nord Stream pipeline on Wednesday to about 20 percent of its capacity, German authorities have said.

Ukraine, meanwhile, says it had restarted operations at its Black Sea ports, a key phase to resuming grain exports under a UN-backed deal.

The French leader is on a tour of three African countries — Cameroon, Benin and Guinea-Bissau — that coincides with an African tour by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

In Ethiopia on Wednesday, Lavrov urged a gathering of African diplomats not to back a US-led world order.

It is up to us to decide whether to have a “world where we have (the) so-called collective West... totally subordinated to the United States and feeling... that it has the right to decide when and how to promote its own interests, without following international law”, he said. The West responded to Russia’s military incursion into Ukraine by imposing sanctions on Moscow.

In Addis Ababa, Lavrov accused the West of throwing its principles “down the drain... when they needed to do what they believe is to punish Russia”.

“I don’t have the slightest doubt that if need be, they will not hesitate to do the same in relation to any other country... which would irritate them,” he warned.

French pledge of support

In Cameroon on Tuesday, Macron said the archives on French colonial rule in Cameroon would be opened “in full” and asked historians to shed light on the period’s “painful moments”.

French colonial authorities brutally repressed armed Cameroonian nationalists before the country’s independence in 1960.

Published in Dawn, July 28th, 2022