Russia’s Policy in a Dynamic Africa: Searching for a Strategy

... contacts with African elites and building trusting relations in the spirit of Soviet diplomacy. Olga Kulkova: What Russia Can Offer Africa Africa is also changing ethnoculturally. One striking example of this change was the 2014–2018 Oromo revolution in Ethiopia, which went unnoticed by the Russian expert community. It is customary for experts to talk about Ethiopia’s special status in Russian foreign policy: the countries share a common Christian culture; Russian poet Alexander Pushkin’s great-grandfather was born in Ethiopia; and the first hospital in the country was built by the Russian Red Cross back in 1898. However, the country’s ethnopolitical balance has been changing rapidly: the southern ...