France has warned that the growing presence of Russian military advisors and weapons in the Central African Republic could exacerbate tensions in the war-torn nation.
The statement comes after a rebel leader demanded Russia explain the presence of its “mercenaries” in the country.
A French colony until 1960 and one of the poorest countries in the world, the CAR has suffered from fighting since 2013, when mostly Muslim rebels overthrew the government but were pushed back by Christian militias.
The United Nations Security Council allowed Russia in 2017 to begin delivering arms to the country’s new Christian president, and Moscow sent 175 instructors to train CAR troops earlier this year. The president’s personal guard is now reportedly made up largely of Russians.
Last week Moscow said it would send more arms and instructors in the greatest show of influence in Africa since Soviet times.
“Africa belongs to Africans and no one else, no more to the Russians than the French,” French defence minister Florence Parly told the weekly Jeune Afrique. “Russia has asserted its presence in the Central African Republic in recent months, it is true, but I am not sure that this presence and the actions deployed by Moscow, like the agreements negotiated in Khartoum at the end of August, help to stabilise the country.”
Armed groups signed a tentative agreement in August that Russia and Sudan helped to broker. French peacekeepers are in the CAR as part of a UN mission.
After a Muslim assembly leader was kicked out by a censure vote on Friday, Abdoulaye Hissene, head of the National Defence and Security Council (CNDS), which includes former rebel groups, demanded all state officials and Russian “mercenaries” leave areas under CNDS control.
He accused the Russians of being involved in the “parliamentary coup” against the Muslim leader and said Moscow must explain the “dangerous” role that Kremlin-linked mercenaries were playing in the country.
Suspicions have previously been raised that Russians are cutting deals with rebels and deploying mercenaries to guard the extraction of gold, diamonds and uranium. The foreign ministry said earlier this year Russia and the CAR had agreed on joint “exploratory mining concessions”.
Three Russian journalists were killed in the CAR this summer while investigating Wagner group mercenaries linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a catering magnate known as “Putin’s chef”.
The large amount of cash the journalists were carrying was not stolen, nor was their equipment.
In February, Wagner mercenaries were killed by US airstrikes in Syria while attacking a Kurdish-held oil and gas refinery.
Prigozhin has been indicted by the United States for funding a troll factory that interfered in the 2016 presidential election.
The Russian trolls have allegedly been targeting the November 6 mid-term elections, and an accountant at the troll factory was charged this month with defrauding the United States.