Ukraine is losing the plot in Africa | Opinions

On August 5, the government of Mali announced its decision to cut diplomatic ties with Ukraine, citing a Ukrainian official’s boastful admission that Kyiv provided Malian rebels with crucial intel for a rebel assault that killed many Russian Wagner Group mercenaries and Malian soldiers.

The northern Tuareg rebels claimed responsibility for the deaths of at least 84 mercenaries and 47 Malian soldiers over three days of fighting in late July in what proved to be Wagner’s heaviest defeat since its controversial 2021 entry into the Sahel conflict on the side of the Malian government.

On July 29, Andriy Yusov, the spokesperson for Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (GUR), told the public broadcaster Suspilne that the Malian rebels had received “all the information they needed, which allowed [them] to carry out their operation against the Russian war criminals”.

As Yusov’s statement made its way to Mali and caused immediate backlash, the Ukrainian government tried to deny playing any role whatsoever in the deadly rebel assault, but failed to convince the Malian government. Both Mali and its ally Niger, expressing “deep shock” about a friendly nation’s involvement in an attack that cost dozens of Malian lives, swiftly ended all ties with the Ukrainian government.

The rift came at a time when Kyiv is trying desperately to garner support on the global stage.

Ukraine has been engaged in an all-out war against Russia since the latter embarked on a full-scale invasion of its territory on February 24, 2022. In more than two years of the war, Russia’s aggression killed tens of thousands of Ukrainians, injured many others and made millions into refugees.

So far, the Ukrainian military, with support from its Western allies, has prevented Russia’s much larger armed forces from declaring a decisive victory. In fact, it recently adopted a much more assertive stance in the war and even began conducting offensive operations within Russia’s borders. On August 10, for example, Ukrainian troops shared footage of themselves removing Russian flags from government structures in villages across Russia’s Kursk region.

Over the last 30 months, Ukraine has been working hard to persuade world leaders to condemn Russia, affirm their unwavering recognition of its territorial integrity and support its war effort.

As Ukraine tries to fight off deadly Russian imperialism, one would have expected it to receive enthusiastic support from African states which have been resisting imperial aggression since their very inception. Indeed, it should have been easy for Ukraine to garner support from Africans, as Russia’s assault on Ukraine is not only reminiscent of past imperial aggressions on Africa, but it also inflicted a heavy economic cost on the continent, leaving several countries worried about their next wheat shipment.

Yet, Ukraine seems to have decided the elimination of a handful of Wagner mercenaries, whose loss would cause no meaningful harm to the Russian war machine, is more important to its cause than the support of entire African nations. By helping rebels fighting against government-aligned Russian mercenaries score a victory in Mali, Ukraine perhaps slightly embarrassed Russia, but achieved no leverage in its own war against it.

In fact, its open support for the Malian rebels seriously undermined its credibility on the global stage, demonstrating that it is not just a proud nation resisting a much larger and more powerful imperial invader with everything it has got but a belligerent determined to assert power over its enemy at any cost, including the security of other states thousands of miles away from its territory.

African states and regional organisations, which have been watching Ukraine’s actions on the continent closely since the February revelation that its forces have been supporting the Sudanese military in its war against the Wagner-allied Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia, immediately took notice of Ukraine’s apparent lack of respect for Mali’s sovereignty and the wellbeing of its people.

Following the July attack, regional body ECOWAS released a statement tacitly condemning the apparent Ukrainian overreach in Mali. Although Mali was suspended from the group in 2022, in the statement ECOWAS expressed its “firm disapproval and firm condemnation of any outside interference in the region which could constitute a threat to peace and security in West Africa and any attempt aiming to draw the region into current geopolitical confrontations”.

Africans are concerned about Ukrainian actions against Russians on the continent because they still have vivid memories of the Cold War era and the harm the extension of the rivalry between Russia and the United States to the continent inflicted on their countries.

They remember, for example, how Western nations helped allied separatist rebels torture and kill Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba, fearing that he would bring his resource-rich Central African nation closer to the Soviet Union.

They also remember how the Cold War rivalries transformed the power struggle between Angola’s liberation movements into a 20-year civil war, which ended up claiming the lives of some one million people.

In apparent recognition of the harm its efforts to weaken the Wagner Group, and by extension Russia, has caused to its standing in Africa, Ukraine currently appears to be in a charm offensive to win favour with leaders of the continent. Ukraine’s representatives are not only strongly denying Yusov’s claims that their intelligence support was behind the success of the July attack in Mali, but working overtime to strengthen ties between African states and their country. Ukraine recently established nine new embassies across the continent and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is said to be planning a visit to the continent later this year.

It remains to be seen whether the backlash it received over its actions in Mali will encourage Ukraine to cut down on its intelligence and other military support activities against Russia’s Wagner group across Africa. One thing that is certain, however, is that Ukraine cannot win the support of the global community, and convince them of the righteousness of its struggle, while jeopardising the security and territorial integrity of other nations in the name of weakening Russia.

Today, Ukraine appears to be at a crossroads when it comes to its relations with Africa and much of the Global South. It will either learn to respect the sovereignty of all nations, apologise to Mali, and commit to treating all friendly states as respected equals. Or it will choose to follow the example of its archenemy, continue to operate outside the boundaries of international law,  and resign to being perceived by much of the world as yet another belligerent Western state that can never be trusted as an ally.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.