Minister of Foreign Affairs Olivier Nduhungirehe held a productive phone conversation with Bogdanov Mikhail Leonidovich, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, responsible for relations with the Middle East and Africa.
Their discussion focused on strengthening Rwanda-Russia cooperation and exchanging views on the situation in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Russia has called for an immediate end to hostilities in the eastern part of the DRC, the withdrawal of armed groups, and the resumption of negotiations within regional peacekeeping frameworks. This was stated by Maria Zakharova, Director of the Information and Press Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry, during a briefing last Friday.
Earlier, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, called for the resumption of negotiations in Luanda.
After a rapid advance, the M23 rebel group said it took control of most of the Congolese city of Goma earlier this week.
The group is primarily composed of ethnic Tutsis. Failing to integrate into the Congolese army, it first led an insurgency against the government in 2012 and remerged in 2022.
The DRC has accused Rwanda of supporting M23 by supplying weapons and deploying troops in North Kivu Province. Kigali denies these allegations, claiming it is only taking defensive measures, and in turn accuses Congo of supporting the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Rwandan ethnic militia which is directly linked to the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda in 1994. (End).