As Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine enters its seventh month, many African countries have yet to show strong support for Kyiv, to the chagrin of Western leaders. In the early days of the conflict, after 17 African countries declined to back a UN resolution condemning Russia, several European diplomats assigned to African capitals made a grand show of browbeating African leaders for not taking a stand against the invasion. South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, in particular, was the target of some strikingly undiplomatic tweets, with Riina Kionka, at the time the EU’s ambassador to Pretoria, writing that “we were puzzled because [South Africa] sees itself and is seen by the world as a country championing human rights.”
Despite continued Western pressure, however, the situation has not changed much in the months since. In July, for example, French President Emmanuel Macron traveled to central Africa and West Africa to rally support for Ukraine, yet he managed only to rankle many African leaders when he accused them of “hypocrisy” for refusing to condemn the war. By contrast, during a visit to multiple African countries that same month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov emphasized Russia’s ties with the continent and portrayed Russia as a “victim” in Ukraine. To date, only a handful of African countries—Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria among them—have taken a strong stance on the war, and even these have focused primarily on denouncing aggression more broadly and on general calls for diplomacy and peace rather than on specific criticism of Moscow.
