Russia on Wednesday vetoed an attempt to keep inside military-run Mali a team of UN experts who had charged that foreign forces — a veiled reference to Moscow-linked Wagner mercenaries — were involved in widespread abuses.
Thirteen of the UN Security Council’s 15 members backed a proposal that would have extended by one year targeted sanctions in Mali, which expire this week, and kept the experts in place.
But Russia exercised its veto power to block the proposal led by Mali’s former colonial power France and the United Arab Emirates. China abstained.
Russia’s ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, noted that the sanctions were first put in place in 2017 to support a peace agreement in the long-troubled Sahel country.
“It is fundamentally important that UN Security Council sanctions deal purely with that issue and not be used as a means of foreign influence on Mali, and that is something that the panel of experts of the Security Council has been involved in,” he said.বিস্তারিত