EU foreign ministers should “support” the US Trump administration by matching its sanctions against the Rwandan army over its invasion of eastern DR Congo, the latter’s communications minister Patrick Muyaya told EUobserver on Tuesday (10 March). 

The US treasury department imposed the sanctions under its Global Magnitsky Act after the Rwandan army and M23 captured the city of Ulvira in the South Kivu province on 10 December, just days after the Rwandan and Congolese presidents signed the US-brokered peace agreement in Washington. 

The entire Rwandan army has been sanctioned, and accused of “actively supporting, training, and fighting alongside the [M23],” a charge that it rejects. 

The EU following suit would be a major step, said Muyaya. 

Rwanda has hit back at the sanctions, and the demand by US treasury secretary Scott Bessent that it order “the immediate withdrawal of RDF troops, weapons, and equipment”. The US demands are one-sided and “misrepresent the reality and distort the facts of the conflict”, said a Rwandan government spokesperson last week.

The EU could move as early as next week. DR Congo foreign minister Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner is in Brussels this week as part of a concerted push by Kinshasa to persuade EU foreign ministers to match the US sanctions at a foreign affairs council next Monday (16 March). 

The Trump administration “deserves much more support from the European Union in order to put more pressure on president [Paul] Kagame,” Muyaya told EUobserver. 

Though the EU imposed sanctions on several Rwandan military officials, a government minister and a gold refinery last March, Congolese ministers have been frustrated by its reluctance to move further.

France, Germany, Belgium

France, Belgium and Germany are among a group of EU countries pushing for tougher sanctions against Rwanda, though a decision at next Monday’s meeting is unlikely.

Muyaya also accused Rwanda of showing “a lack of political will” to deliver on a peace agreement between the two countries that was signed in Washington last December. 

The Rwandan army and the M23 militia group have captured swathes of territory and the major cities in eastern DR Congo over the past several years.

The Rwandan government says that its military presence is to protect its own border from militia groups linked to the 1994 genocide against Rwanda’s Tutsi population by the majority Hutu. 

As well as imposing sanctions, which would include travel bans and asset freezes, Kinshasa wants the EU to suspend payments to the Rwandan army to finance a peacekeeping mission led by the country in Cabo Delgado, a province in north-east Mozambique which is home to a multi-billion euro LNG project run by TotalEnergies. The EU has previously paid the Rwandan military for a similar mission in Central African Republic. 

“This army is not credible anymore, because you cannot support peacekeeping mission in Central Africa and also be responsible for the massacres committed in the eastern part of DRC,” said Muyaya. 

His government has also repeatedly urged the EU Commission to suspend a ‘cash for minerals access’ agreement with Rwanda.  

One of the world’s most resource-rich countries, Congolese ministers say that Rwanda’s invasion has allowed it to plunder deposits of cobalt, coltan and other precious metals and smuggle them across the border into Rwanda.

Last year, the commission promised to review the deal but took no action. MEPs, for their part, called for the agreement to be suspended. 

Muyaya said that in the first six months of 2025, Rwanda’s exports of coltan increased by 213 percent, adding that “there is a direct relationship between the war and mineral resources.”