Those as you called them "Russian proxies" are the Sahel states fighting against western backed jihadists and trying to decolonise from centuries of French occupation. This is opposite of imperialism.

[+] geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml -6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

So Russia is helping the Sudanese government from the bottom of their heart and not for monetary gains of gold? I call them proxies because they would fall apart without foreign backing since they don't have the support of the population.

Sure Russia can "back the good guys". In fact since the Western empire is the colonizer of Africa, it means that whatever Russia backs is by default "fighting imperialism". But Russia isn't helping countries out of goodwill. They also want natural resources in return.

China on the other hand is a lot better because they don't get involved militarily.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 15 points 2 weeks ago

Nobody here is suggesting that Russia is helping African nations due to some altruistic reasons. They directly benefit from decolonialization and these nations not being under western domination. What you're doing is creating a false equivalence between what Russia is doing in Africa and what the west has done. It doesn't mean that Russia would've behaved differently if they had more resources, but the reality is that they do not have the means to colonize Africa. Yet they can help decolonize it, and they benefit from new trading partners resulting from that.