The Republic’s president pointed out on Thursday that Portugal has “experience” with international missions in Africa and can monitor the activities of “non-African” groups operating on that continent, without specifying how.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa made no mention of Wagner, the main group of mercenaries active in Africa, in countries such as Mali or the Central African Republic (CAR), but wanted to comment on a question posed by his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky about Russian paramilitaries.
“Portugal has experience in its intervention in international missions, namely in Africa, which allows it to accompany interventions of non-African groups in those societies and states in which we carry out a mission of political stabilization”said Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, without specifying what he meant by “accompany”.
At a joint press conference with Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenksy was asked about the presumed death of Wagner group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin on Wednesday following the crash of a plane calling between Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia.
Zelensky did not elaborate on Prigozhin’s probable death, but noted that Ukraine “has no connection with this situation”. The Ukrainian president even joked about this issue: “when Ukraine talked about planes with countries around the world, this was not what we wanted to say. Honestly. We had something completely different in mind and we wanted support.”
The President of Ukraine asked for the support of Portugal, which has strong ties to Africa through the Community of Portuguese-speaking Countries (CPLP) – which also includes countries such as Cape Verde, a member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) – to to make clear the need to support Ukraine in the fight against the Russian invasion.
There are several African countries with neutral positions on the conflict, aligning themselves with Moscow or even being ambiguous, as is the case in Mozambique.
The Portuguese head of state was also asked what additional guarantees of support Portugal can give Ukraine, namely by sending F-16 fighter jets.
“The F-16s… I will not go into details, in terms of military cooperation beyond what is already known, and what is already known is that Portugal has already made available so far, within the scope of its military cooperation, training and everything related to air assets infrastructure and maintenance,” he said.
To this day, Portugal’s position is to participate in the training of Ukrainian pilots in handling the F-16 fighters, as well as its maintenance, but the country has not put the availability of fighters on the table.
The Ministry of Defense repeatedly referred to all the F-16s that Portugal has that are operational and involved in patrolling Portuguese airspace and in Atlantic Alliance missions.
Source: DN
