On March 22, under the golds of the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping celebrated their “mature, stable, independent and tenacious relationship”. And promised, among other things, to strengthen their coordination on African affairs. A month later, the crisis in Sudan puts this marriage to the test.
In this East African state, of which China is the second largest trading partner, the two strong men of power, the army chief and General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, alias “Hemetti”, who heads the paramilitary rapid support forces, wage a war to the death. However, Hemetti has made a pact with the Wagner group, fake nose of the Kremlin, to reign over the country’s gold mines. Today, Russian mercenaries are suspected of supporting the rebel general. This does not suit Xi, forced to evacuate his compatriots from the country.
“Moscow and Beijing have conflicting interests in Africa, underlines Alessandro Arduino, professor at King’s College London. China needs stability and security to carry out its new silk roads; Wagner, on the other hand, prospers in the chaos.”
A previous episode has undoubtedly alerted Beijing: the assassination, on March 20, of nine Chinese employees of the mining company Gold Coast Group, operating in the Central African Republic, in an area controlled by government forces… and their Russian allies of Wagner . These roughnecks will probably not waver the Russian-Chinese partnership. But they expose the limits of this “dear friendship”.
