RUSSIA-AFRICA SUMMIT 2023: day one thread

It is 9h30 in St Petersburg and the summit is in full swing. The venue has been open since 8 and already many of the scheduled panels are ongoing. Who has arrived? What are the public discussions about? Let's take a look...

So, you arrived in St Petersburg,
you had your mandatory PCR test,
you unlocked your badge ID when receiving a negative result,
you took the shuttle bus from your hotel on to the venue (because they will not let you in without going on the shuttle!),
you followed the...

Lavrov's 2023 Africa Tour 🧵OPEN THREAD

The second tour since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion, Lavrov is reportedly visiting South Africa, eSwatini, Botswana, Angola, Tunisia, Mauritania, Algeria and Morocco. As part of my Russia-Global South research, I will be… 1/ … following his moves in the continent closely.

The tour begins just after several US officials made high-level visits to the continent, Yellen and Nuland among them. The December US Africa Summit also likely played a role in conceiving the tour. 2/ issafrica.org/iss-today/serg…

Catching up with this Izvestiya report on Russia-Africa: new affiliated ‘Russia house’ cultural centres opened in Algeria, Egypt, Mali and Sudan, with Angola next. The number of scholarships assigned to African states will nearly double. #RussiaGS iz.ru/export/google/… Guinea 🇬🇳 will see its number of scholarships grow by four—Russia used to have a large influence there until a coup deposed long-term Putin ally Alpha Condé.

Mali 🇲🇱 – which used to have a Western-aligned gov – will grow to 290 scholarships a year from just 35.

Dagestan's Politics: a Short Introduction

Starting with the conclusions:
I expect mobilisation to push people to engage in active resistance, but there is no clear path to armed conflict just yet. ‘Separatism’ is unlikely to come back to Dagestan. 🧵 The popular view of Dagestan's politics is that they happen somewhere between extremism and separatism, and the authority's attempts to contain them.

KARAKALPAKSTAN MEGATHREAD: Did Uzbekistan Avert Its Terminal Crisis?

To understand today's crisis in Karakalpakstan, one must look at recent events as the result of long-festering grievances and a long-standing constitutional crisis in Uzbekistan. In a glimpse, the protests are a marginal crisis in a marginal part of Central Asia. The region is among Uzbekistan's poorest and least populated. Yet, the decision to end Karakalpakstan's...

Happening now!

https://twitter.com/CEES_GlasgowUni/status/1502208246991540224?t=3nfI-EjJxAuPrroaDa5nog&s=19

UofG Principal @UofGVC calls for support for the humanitarian funds prepared for the victims of the war.

We are slowly learning about the deployments of North Caucasus republics other than Kadyrov's army. I will open a thread here to document what is known about these deployments of North Caucasus troops not from Chechnya: 1/ First, huge HT to @chambersharold8 and @RALee85 for alerting me to this new information through their tweets: 2/

https://twitter.com/chambersharold8/status/1501264794015383557?s=19

Following 2014, Russia 🇷🇺 faced sanctions and a diminished global presence. This drove Moscow to re-engage world regions that it neglected, such as MENA and LATAM. Coming out of thesis writing for a THREAD on the diplomatic fallout of today's Russian re-invasion of Ukraine 🇺🇦: The map in the previous tweet shows international reactions to Russia's recognition of L/DNR and it gives an approximate image of what to expect. 1/