Russian diamond mining company Alrosa and bank VTB were forced to leave Angola due to international sanctions imposed because of the Ukraine war. <\/p>\n
Angolan President Jo\u00e3o Louren\u00e7o has pivoted towards the West, and has not met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin since 2019.<\/p>\n
The Russian operatives in Africa were breaking new ground by moving into Angola, it is claimed.<\/p>\n
“This is indicative of Russian anxiety of the direction of travel of Angola under the Louren\u00e7o administration,” says Alex Vines, Africa programme director at think-tank European Council on Foreign Relations. <\/p>\n
“There’s clearly an element of Russian disinformation to try and build up more sympathy towards the Russian Federation.”<\/p>\n
Alongside the Russians, two Angolans will also face trial for their alleged part in the Russian-linked influence operation. <\/p>\n
The prosecution alleges the Russians hired sports journalist Amor Carlos Tom\u00e9 and political activist Francisco Oliveira to conduct their activities in the country. <\/p>\n
They are facing nine and five charges respectively, including terrorism, espionage, and influence peddling.<\/p>\n
The legal team representing the Angolan defendants say there isn’t sufficient evidence against them and that “the accusation is based on mere conjecture”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russian diamond mining company Alrosa and bank VTB were forced to leave Angola due to international sanctions imposed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-492107","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}