Ivan Kopytsev
27.06.2024 Ivan Kopytsev

At SPIEF, Deputy Head of the Sovereign Council of Sudan Malik Agar arrived in Russia along with other high-ranking guests. According to experts, the purpose of the visit is to re-conclude an agreement on the construction of a Russian logistics base in Port Sudan, the implementation of which will lead to significant changes in the balance of power in the Red Sea region…

21.06.2024 Ivan Kopytsev

Since 2011 Libya has somewhat been a ‘terra incognita’ on the political map of the world. The processes happening within the country, as well as the sporadic conflicts, are a product of too many factors to be fathomable for most people. Furthermore, an assessment of the current situation, including considering the plurality of political institutions and the prospects for ending the year-long crisis of Libyan statehood, is very intriguing from the point of view of the regional security architecture and interstate cooperation…

08.06.2024 Ivan Kopytsev

Against the background of the emergence of information about the adoption by the House of Representatives of Ethiopia of an amendment regulating the process of removing political parties from the list of terrorist organizations, there are wide opportunities for analysis and forming the most substantiated interpretations of such a development, which can be considered not only as formalising the existing balance of power, but also as a political gesture aimed at reconciling the federal centre with the armed opposition…

24.05.2024 Ivan Kopytsev

The more than year-long armed conflict between the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces has already had dire consequences, including a humanitarian crisis, destruction of infrastructure and paralysis of government institutions. At the same time, its impact on the situation in the region should not be underestimated: without exception, all of Sudan’s neighbors are to some extent linked to the parties to the conflict…

01.04.2024 Ivan Kopytsev

The trend in recent years and even months to talk more and more frequently and actively about the Global South as such, and about Africa in particular, may in some cases be seen as a fashionable, superficial fad, but it is not without a significant practical component. Even a cursory analysis of the dynamics of bilateral meetings and summits with an “African focus” is the most vivid illustration of the “turn to Africa”…

26.03.2024 Ivan Kopytsev

In recent months, the Horn of Africa has become one of the world’s most active sources of political news. No sooner have analysts discussed the reasons for the signing, possible ways of implementation and possible consequences of the Memorandum of Understanding between Ethiopia and Somaliland, than new stories have appeared on the agenda. In particular, we are talking about the agreement signed between Turkey and the Federal Government of Somalia on 22 February 2024. Formally, the Turkish side undertook only to provide…

21.03.2024 Ivan Kopytsev

A year ago, any talk of a hypothetical alliance between the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and Fano would have gone no further than greetings, but today the situation has changed. Once at the forefront of the anti-Tigray forces, Fano’s Amharic nationalist organisation has come under attack from its new ally, the Ethiopian government led by Abiy Ahmed, while its former antagonist, the TPLF, has managed to restore peace with the federal centre…

15.03.2024 Ivan Kopytsev

Unlike the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) and the Fano group, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) fell into the anti-government camp not as a force challenging year of lawlessness and discrimination by the federal government. On the contrary, the TPLF, which was created in the 1970s to fight the socialist Derg regime, managed over the years to transform from a tiny ethnic group into a powerful party that indirectly controlled the political system of Ethiopia for more than 20 years…

11.03.2024 Ivan Kopytsev

Ethiopia’s current political landscape is largely defined by the results of the “Oromo Revolution” – a political process that preceded the fall of the longstanding (1991-2018) hegemony of the and was initially seen as a harbinger of a soon-to-be landmark transformation in the country’s political life. After almost six years, however, it has become clear that such rosy expectations have been shattered by the harsh reality: the coming to power of Abiy Ahmed – the first prime minister in Ethiopia’s history…

14.02.2024 Ivan Kopytsev

At the end of January 2024, another representative of the Western world clearly demonstrated its interest in developing cooperation with the countries of the Global South: on Monday January 29 an Italy-Africa summit, organized by Italy, opened in Rome. Although this event is not comparable in scale to recent Russia-Africa or US-Africa summits, either in terms of both the number of participants or the importance of the depth of the issues involved, it would be a mistake to ignore it. Especially since, in addition to the leaders of countries that have traditionally maintained relations with Europe…

09.02.2024 Ivan Kopytsev

The number of significant political events across the African continent has increased dramatically recently: not even a month after the signing of the sensational Memorandum of Understanding between Ethiopia and Somaliland, another news story has already taken centre stage. Thus, on 28 January, the military Governments of three Sahel States – Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger – announced their decision to leave the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) with immediate effect. It should be borne in mind that any political changes in the Sahel zone may be of fundamental importance for Russia’s interests…

31.01.2024 Ivan Kopytsev

Despite the fact that even large-scale political events in the global South, which do not directly affect the interests of the leading players, traditionally remain somewhere on the periphery of the attention of the media and the general public of the Western-centric world, the signing of a memorandum of understanding between Ethiopia and Somaliland has nevertheless become one of the significant information events in January 2024. This agreement predictably caused outrage in the Somali federal government…