Haruna Warkani, a retired diplomat of the regional bloc ECOWAS, told RT that Kiev has been secretly assisting Tuareg rebels
Ukraine is an enemy of West Africa and the continent as a whole due to its support for rebel groups responsible for instability in several countries, a former official of the regional bloc ECOWAS has said.
Haruna Warkani, who is a retired diplomat of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Commission, made the allegations during an interview with RT on Friday.
“Ukraine had been supporting some of these Tuareg rebels in West Africa under the guise of assistance and what have you. However, there are certain things that cannot be kept in secret forever, and now it is becoming very clear to ECOWAS,” he stated.
“Ukraine … has never been transparent enough to tell the subregion or other parts of Africa its nefarious activities on the continent, and now we can see that Ukraine actually had been the enemy,” he added.
It comes at a time when the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry is demanding an apology from ECOWAS over recent remarks made by the bloc’s commissioner for political affairs, peace, and security, Abdel-Fatau Musah. While speaking on one of the panels during the Russia-Africa Partnership ministerial forum in Krasnodar Region last week, Musah accused Kiev of genocide in Donbass, and terrorism.
Warkani and Musah are the latest African figures to accuse Kiev of supporting aggression in Africa following a deadly raid in Mali carried out by Tuareg insurgents in July. Dozens of Wagner Group private military personnel and Malian forces were killed in the ambush in the West African nation’s northern region.
At the time, Andrey Yusov, the spokesman for Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence agency, said the rebels had “received necessary information… which enabled a successful military operation against Russian war criminals.”
Yusov’s statement was widely interpreted as a claim of direct involvement, prompting the Malian military government and its ally Niger to sever diplomatic relations with Ukraine. The two Sahel states, along with Burkina Faso, have asked the UN Security Council to take actions against Kiev.
ECOWAS also responded with a warning against any foreign interference that undermines regional peace and security. This is despite Bamako, Niamey, and Ouagadougou publicly announcing their decision to withdraw from the 15-nation bloc.
The Ukrainian government has repeatedly denied any involvement in the attack or providing support to Tuareg militants. However, last month, French daily Le Monde reported that Ukrainian spies shared their drone warfare techniques to help the rebels kill Russian security contractors in the Sahel state.
Russia, which has promised to assist in combating the lethal jihadist insurgency in Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso, has also accused Ukraine of aiding terrorist groups in the Sahel. The three landlocked states, all under military rule, have reached defense agreements with Moscow after expelling French troops for failing to quell terrorist groups during a decade-long security mission.
