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All of South Africa’s military maneuvers with Russia and China

2 years ago babelfish

All of South Africa's military maneuvers with Russia and China

South Africa will hold a military exercise with the navies of Russia and China, making the West cringe.

Slap in the face to the USA, the West and Ukraine by South Africa, which not only refused to condemn the aggression against Kiev in the UN, but is now preparing to host the navies of Russia and China in the part of a trilateral exercise to be held precisely in conjunction with the first anniversary of the outbreak of war.

The military exercise in South Africa

The announcement of the new joint commitment of the armed forces of Pretoria, Moscow and Beijing was made on January 20 by the South African government.

"The South African National Defense Force (SANDF) – reads the release – will host a multinational maritime exercise with Russia and China for a period of ten days", from 17 to 27 February.

Dubbed the "MOSI exercise," the event will be held in the port cities of Durban and Richards Bay in the Indian Ocean waters to the east of the country, and has the stated goal of "strengthening already flourishing relations between the three countries."

The text of the executive specifies that this is the second joint exercise carried out by the three countries, with the first held in November 2019 in Cape Town.

The participation of the Russian frigate with supersonic missiles

As Tass specified on Monday, Reuters reports, a jewel of the Russian navy will take part in the exercise: the flagship of the fleet of the Soviet Union Gorshkov, which is armed with supersonic Zircon missiles that travel at a speed nine times higher than that of sound and have a range of more than a thousand kilometers.

As Al Jazeera recalls, Putin in the past spoke of the frigate and its supersonic missiles convinced that "they have no analogues in the world".

The visit of Lavrov and the declarations of the Foreign Minister of Pretoria

The announcement of the exercise was made a few days before the visit of the head of Russian diplomacy Sergej Lavrov , welcomed in Pretoria by his counterpart Naledi Pandor against the backdrop of lively protests by the opposition, who denounced the inappropriateness of both the visit how much of the exercise, and of the albeit small Ukrainian community residing in South Africa.

But the welcome given by Pandor to his colleague was more than warm as well as punctuated by statements that made the West shiver.

“All countries around the world conduct exercises with their friends. It is the natural course of relations”, said the minister, pressed by questions from reporters present at the joint press conference with Lavrov.

Reiterating President Cyril Ramaphosa's line of neutrality, Pandor argued that South Africa does not intend to be forced to take sides on the conflict in Ukraine, but also accused the West of double standards as it condemns Russia and ignores issues such as the Palestinian question .

In confirming that South Africa will not align itself with Kiev's allies in condemning Russia, the minister stressed that her country cannot take "simplistic and childish positions … given the massive transfer of arms" to Ukraine.

As reported by the BBC , the Ministry of Defense in Pretoria has given Pandor a hand by defending the planned exercise and recalling that in the past South Africa has hosted other similar ones with the USA, France and other NATO countries.

Lavrov's words

During the joint press conference, Lavrov praised South Africa's "well-balanced and careful approach" to the issue of the war in Ukraine.

The minister obviously defended the joint exercise calling it a natural development in which "three sovereign countries, without violating any norm of international law, conduct exercises". He then mocked "our American colleagues" who "believe that only they can conduct exercises around the world".

Lavrov also said he was in favor of the fact that "each country has its own rights in the international system as stipulated by the UN charter", stating that it is in this framework that "we develop our cooperation including in the context of the BRICS".

The comment of the Ispi analyst

In a long thread on Twitter, ISPI researcher Eleonora Tafuro dug deep into the reasons that lead to the embrace of two countries like South Africa and Russia.

Tafuro recalls above all that South Africa is "one of Russia's most important allies in a continent that is divided over the invasion of Ukraine and the related Western attempts at isolation" by Moscow, which – adds the analyst – "wants to show that it still has commercial and security partners who will not stop doing business with Russia because of its aggression against Ukraine”.

With regard to the anti-Western rhetoric that dominates Russian public discourse, Tafuro points out that such an attitude finds attentive ears on the African continent, arousing the memory of the times when the Soviet Union supported anti-colonial movements. This, the analyst underlines, today constitutes "a key part of Moscow's soft power strategy on the continent".

Tafuro also adds a significant detail relating to the existing and ongoing ties between Russia and BRICS countries such as South Africa, involved in the Russian attempt to "use national currencies for international payments, thus bypassing the dollar and US sanctions".

In this regard, the ISPI researcher recalls that "the BRICS bloc has already begun to issue loans in national currencies with its New Development Bank and is also conducting trade" with the same currencies.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/sudafrica-cina-russia-esercitazione-militare/ on Wed, 25 Jan 2023 06:55:39 +0000.