Ever since Russia commenced its special military operations in Ukraine, it has met with a host of sanctions from the US and its European allies. Moscow has since been on diplomatic offensives and opening up new diplomatic fronts to counter the western animosity.

Africa is high on the agenda for its best alternative. It has aggressively pursued its strategic objectives in Africa in recent years securing a foothold in the eastern Mediterranean, gaining naval port access in the Red Sea, expanding natural resource extraction opportunities, displacing Western influence, and promoting alternatives to democracy as a regional norm.

Africa is thus, is a theater for Russia’s geostrategic interests rather than a destination itself.

While addressing a business forum in Moscow yesterday, Russian strongman Vladimir Putin noted that a new epoch of world history is approaching and only “truly sovereign” states will be able to succeed in the changed environment.

By the term ‘sovereignty’ the Russian president means “freedom of national development, and thus of each person individually,” as well as “technological, cultural, intellectual, educational viability of the state” and a “responsible, active and nationally minded, nationally oriented civil society.”

Such a state, the president said, will serve as an example for others when it comes to “the standards and quality of people’s life, the protection of traditional values and high humanistic ideals.”

This kind of world is in sharp contrast to the Western-dominated unipolar world order, which, in Putin’s opinion, is “becoming a brake on the development of our civilization.”

He accused the West of being “racist and neo-colonial,” saying that its ideology “is becoming increasingly more like totalitarianism.”