On March 21, the US charge d’affaires and the ambassadors of the United Kingdom and Norway in Khartoum issued an unusually strongly worded statement criticizing Russia’s presence in Sudan to mark the first month of the invasion of Ukraine. In particular, the diplomats, known as the Troika, condemned the activities in Sudan of the Wagner Group, a shadowy private military company close to the Kremlin, and deemed it a local example of the global threat that in their view Moscow poses to the country and the continent.
In their joint statement, the Western diplomats specifically accused the Russian contractor of being involved in illicit activities in Sudan connected to gold mining and in spreading disinformation on social media — actions that they consider to be undermining the respect for the rule of law and good governance that the Sudanese people have been fighting for since the onset of the 2018 Revolution. The diplomats acknowledged that Khartoum has the sovereign right to decide on its own its foreign relations, but they warned that they will keep supporting the Sudanese people “as they strive to fulfill [their] aspirations.”
