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C. Africa army head came to Russia for training: minister
MOSCOW, Jan 10, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – The defence minister of the Central
African Republic said in an interview published Thursday that the chief-of-
staff of the conflict-riven nation’s army had been in Russia for training.
Russia’s influence in CAR has been growing since 2017, when the UN-backed
government there called for help to fight militias rampaging through the
country.
Moscow has already supplied weapons, military officers, at least 170
military “trainers” and a security adviser to work with President Faustin-
Archange Touadera.
“As of this month, 1,300 of our army’s soldiers have been instructed and
trained” at a Russian facility in CAR, minister Marie Noelle Koyara told
Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency.
“Our head of the general staff has himself been for training in Russia,”
she added, without providing further details.
Since Russia-trained soldiers have been deployed in the country, “the
situation has not only stabilised, but visibly improved,” she said.
The defence minister said that at the Russian centre at the former
presidential palace in Berengo west of Bangui which opened last year,
soldiers were instructed in how “to become a real military force”.
“If necessary, this centre in Berengo can be expanded because it has
already proven its effectiveness as a training platform,” she said in remarks
translated into Russian.
The African nation is historically linked to France and already has EU and
UN aid, but Koyara insisted Moscow and Paris were acting as partners rather
than rivals in the region.
Rival militias have been battling each other since the 2013 overthrow of
longtime leader Francois Bozize, a Christian, by majority-Muslim militias in
a coalition called the Seleka.
A UN arms embargo imposed that year was in 2017 lifted exclusively for
Moscow.
Most of the country’s territory remains in the hands of armed groups
despite Touadera’s election in 2016.
Violence has claimed thousands of lives, and hundreds of thousands of
people have been internally displaced or fled abroad.
The military trainers sent by Russia are mercenaries with close ties to
Russian mining companies and the numbers deployed could be significantly
higher than officially reported, according to reports in Russian and Western
media.
Last year three Russian journalists who were investigating the shadowy
Russian “Wagner” mercenary group were ambushed and murdered in CAR.
BSS/AFP/RY/1645 hrs