NIAMEY, July 9 (Reuters) – Russia and the West African countries making up the Alliance of \u200cSahel States (AES) – Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso – have \u200cpledged to strengthen military cooperation as jihadist insurgents gain ground \u200bin the region, according to a joint statement issued on Wednesday night after talks in Niger’s capital, Niamey.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met counterparts from the \u200cthree military-led countries, \u2060which all turned to Moscow for support after breaking with France and other \u2060Western allies.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The officials welcomed “growing military and military-technical cooperation”, including assistance from Russia’s paramilitary Africa Corps.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Russia confirmed \u200bits intention \u200bto continue helping to \u200bstrengthen the armed forces \u200cof the AES member states and of their “Unified Force”, the statement said.<\/p>\n
\u2022 In April, the regional al Qaeda affiliate and a Tuareg-led separatist group staged attacks across Mali and killed the defence minister. On \u200cSaturday they attacked numerous army \u200bposts.<\/p>\n
\u2022 The statement alleged, without \u200bevidence, that “external state \u200bactors” including Ukraine and France were involved \u200cin attacks in the region. \u200bBoth have \u200bdenied such allegations.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Lavrov also visited Ethiopia on his Africa tour. A Russia-Africa summit is planned \u200bfor October.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by \u200cNiger newsroom; Additional reporting by Ronald Popeski; \u200bWriting by Amindeh Blaise Atabong; Editing by Robbie \u200bCorey-Boulet and Kevin Liffey)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NIAMEY, July 9 (Reuters) – Russia and the West African countries making up the Alliance of \u200cSahel States…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1078226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7655],"tags":[295296,2743,42054,2744,332,75152,9740,295295],"class_list":["post-1078225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-russia","tag-alliance-of-sahel-states","tag-mali","tag-military-cooperation","tag-niger","tag-russia","tag-russian-foreign-minister","tag-sergei-lavrov","tag-west-african-countries"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116889555281845457","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1078225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1078225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1078226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1078225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1078225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1078225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}