Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Viktor Vasiliev
[REGNUM] Russia's African offensive is exactly how Western media assessed the tour of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov to Africa. In reviews of Western media one can find the following descriptions: “Russia is using its limited resources to challenge the US and EU for influence on the Dark Continent, creating threats to NATO’s southern flank.” Indeed, the Foreign Minister’s African tour was unexpected not only in content and route, but also in format. The fact is that it was largely complemented and overlapped with the African tour of the Deputy Minister of Defense taking place on the same days, but with a slightly different geography. For the first time in history, Russian official diplomacy in Africa acted in conjunction with military diplomacy represented by the Russian Defense Ministry.
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