French troops to leave Burkina Faso as Russia spreads its wings in West Africa

New Delhi: The French government on Wednesday announced that it would withdraw its troops from Burkina Faso with-in a month, after the West African country recently asked France to move its troops out of country amid Russia’s growing foothold in the region. Burkina Faso is battling a Jihadist insurgency since 2015. France had in 2018 reached an agreement with the country’s government to station its troops there to help it mitigate the Jihadist threat. However, recently the Burkina Faso government asked French troops to leave. Russia’s growing foothold in West Africa Captain Ibrahim Traoré seized power in Burkina Faso in a coup last September, which was reportedly aided by Russia. Sergei Markov, a former Kremlin adviser, was quoted by the BBC as saying, “Our people helped the new leader [of Burkina Faso]. “Another African country will move from co-operation with France to an alliance with Russia.” According to European Council of Foreign Affairs, Russia over the last several years has been pushing to gain influence in the Sahel region in West Africa, where so far the European Union had held sway with its military aid to help the regional governments battle insurgencies. But that had increasingly come in conflict with the Union’s value laden foreign policy. The EU, with its aid, also demanded the Sahelian countries to conform to more democratic functioning, which comes in conflict with the sudden changes in power in the countries with frequent coups. Russia here had been seeing an opportunity for fill in for the Europeans without any pressure to change the government functioning. In December last year Ghana’s President accused Burkina Faso of having hired Russian mercenary group Wagner to fight insurgency. He even alleged that the mercenary group has been allocated a mine in lieu of there services. Burkina Faso summoned Ghana’s ambassador over the allegations, but did not deny or accept them formally. Last year the French forces from Burkina Faso’s neighbouring Mali also had to pull out due to reason related to Russia’s growing influence. Mali witnessed two coups; one in 2020 and the other in 2021. This led to deterioration of EU-Mali relations. Russia at the time offered Mali an alternative to the EU. Russian forces got in to a partnership with the country’s military, thus making it untenable for EU to cooperate any longer with Mali’s military. This led to withdrawal of French troops and the missions from other EU countries. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook , Twitter and Instagram .