Russia has dropped the facade of Algerian political hypocrisy, following President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s visit to Moscow to sign agreements–including military ones–on its way to becoming Russia’s “satellite,” says Algerian journalist Abdou Semmar in an 18-minute video on his Youtube channel.
The journalist, from Paris-based “Algerie Part” news outlet, criticizes his country’s regime for abandoning the West at a critical juncture in world geopolitics, emphasizing the gravity of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and accords inked between Algeria and various European nations.
Semmar added that Tebboune had lied about the reasons for his visit, saying that it was a mission to strengthen bilateral economic relations; whereas, in actuality, the only significant agreement was the military accord.
However, the other five talking points were in areas that have no impact on strengthening relations as the Algerian president claimed; but rather, they fall firmly within the sectors of mining, telecommunications, agriculture / plant conservation, culture, and petroleum resources.
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Kuschugetovich Shoigu announced the return–with a vengeance–of Algeria’s gigantic $11 billion arms order for 2019, which includes a huge range of military equipment including tanks, fighter planes, and missiles, etc.
Yet another fabrication circulated by the Algerian president to his constituency is that Algeria has no foreign debt. Interestingly, Putin embarrassingly contradicted this delusion by revealing that Russia will be coming to Algeria’s rescue by absorbing its debt subsequent to Tebboune’s visit.
In the aforementioned video, Semmar accuses Algeria’s leader of financing Russia’s armed intervention in Ukraine, and of positioning itself alongside the Russian state in this dispute.
This comes on the heels of the cancellation of Tebboune’s visit to Paris, which had been scheduled for late June in the wake of the restoration of a controversial portion of the Algerian national anthem which–when originally composed–featured an unfavorable reference to France, thus helping to re-energize the historical toxicity of politics between the two states.