The aggressor-controlled “media” and the criminal “governor” of Sevastopol Mikhail Razvozhaev announced on July 31 the arrival in the occupied city of a “delegation from Senegal headed by the mayor of the city of Thiès Babacar Diop”.
It was extremely difficult to tie this “international breakthrough” to any economic or social realities. And so the occupiers’ propagandists settled on the fact that “an agreement on cultural and economic cooperation was signed between the two cities, which, among other things, involves the establishment of mutual trade,” and that one of the main squares of the two-hundred-thousandcity of Thiès in Senegal “will be named in honor of Sevastopol,” allegedly “adopting the experience of improving public spaces.”
They also launched “voice of experts,” in the form of the “head of the political science department” of the fake “Sevastopol State University,” where, among other things, the “Senegalese delegation” was brought, Alexander Irkhin, and in the form of his senior colleague in the Russian special services, professor of the world economy department at Moscow State Institute of International Relations Denis Degtyarev.
They stated that allegedly “Crimea could become a link in the logistics chain and a processing center for a number of goods from Africa,” without specifying, however, the nature of such specific raw materials in order to “bypass sanctions,” and that the Kremlin should “more actively revive the Soviet experience” of presence in Africa.
However, in addition to the obvious goal of demonstrating the image of an alleged “breakthrough in international isolation,” the Russian special services most likely have more distant plans for Dr. Diop.
Without delving into the depths of Senegalese politics, we note that Babacar Diop heads the newly created “political force” in this country, “Forces démocratiques du Sénégal (FDS)-Les Guelwaars,” and the reference in the name to “Guelwaar” means a reference to the history of the Mandinka ethnic group, mainly living in Mali, neighboring Senegal.
Over the past two years, Diop has been actively creating this FDS group “for himself”, allegedly to participate in the presidential elections of Senegal, and spreading a classic set of populist slogans.
However, in the elections held in March 2024, where Bassirou Diomaye Faye from the left-wing party PASTEF won, Diop did not participate as a candidate, stating that he was allegedly “denied registration”. At the same time, for several years now, Senegal has been marked by a political crisis, which previously developed into unrest, which began after the persecution of Diomaye Faye’s ally from PASTEF and the current Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko for the “rape of a masseuse” by the previous authorities of the country.
Thus, against this background, “Guelvar”, which is obviously financed by “friends from Mali” and Russian special services, may become not so much a weapon of political struggle, but rather a sabotage activity against the Senegalese authorities, and therefore the “revolutionary mayor” Diop clearly came to the meeting with his Kremlin curators not only for the sake of photographs against the backdrop of Razvozhaev.
