Words that certainly aim to warm up bilateral relations. Captain Ibrahim Traoré, president of Burkina Faso resulting from a coup d’etat, affirmed this Friday that there was “no rupture of diplomatic relations or hatred” against France, against a backdrop of tensions linked to the French military presence in the country. Ouagadougou requested on January 22 the departure of French soldiers, present in the country to fight against the jihadist groups raging in the region, within a month. Several demonstrations recently took place in the capital to demand the withdrawal of France, a former colonial power, from this Sahelian country which hosts a contingent of nearly 400 French special forces.
“The end of diplomatic agreements, no! “, tempered Captain Traoré on Friday in a television interview granted to Burkinabe journalists. “There is no severance of diplomatic relations or hatred against any particular state,” he added.
As in Mali, where the ruling military junta also secured the departure of French soldiers, suspicions of Russian interference are growing. “Russia is a choice of reason in this dynamic”, and “we believe that our partnership must be strengthened”, underlined at the end of January the Prime Minister Apollinaire Kyélem de Tembela, at the end of an interview with the ambassador of Russia Alexey Saltykov.
Ibrahim Traoré however denied on Friday the presence of the Russian paramilitary group Wagner on Burkinabe soil. “We heard everywhere that Wagner is in Ouagadougou, I even asked some oh, where are they? Said Captain Traoré, adding: “It’s something that was created to make everyone run away from us. So congratulations! “.
Ibrahim Traoré took power last September following a military coup, the second in eight months.