Ugandan pop star and former presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi, known popularly as Bobi Wine, revealed an unannounced visit to Kyiv, Ukraine, on Tuesday in solidarity with the government there against Russia’s invasion of the country.
Wine – who has faced multiple violent assaults he attributes to the regime of Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni and “lost” last year’s presidential election amid widespread reports of ballot box thefts and other irregularities – is the most high-profile African political figure, and African celebrity, to express support for Ukraine in the ongoing war.
In addition to his successful career as an “Afrobeat” genre star, Wine served in the Ugandan Parliament as a member of his National Unity Platform party.
He continues to maintain leadership of the party. He lost his parliamentary seat during the 2021 election, when he was also placed under house arrest following the dubious results of the election.
The Russian government has for decades, going back to the days of the Soviet Union, fostered friendly ties with African leaders that have now resulted in most states on the continent maintaining either neutral stances on the Ukraine war or actively supporting Russia’s claims that NATO expansion made the invasion necessary.
Ugandan politician, singer, actor Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, a.k.a. Bobi Wine, poses on September 1, 2022 during a photocall for the documentary film “Bobi Wine: Ghetto President” presented out of competition at the 79th Venice International Film Festival at Lido di Venezia in Venice, Italy. ( TIZIANA FABI/AFP via Getty)
Senegalese President Macky Sall announced a proposed trip to Ukraine in May, in addition to a stop in Moscow, but has yet to travel to the war-torn European country. Sall ultimately met with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in June in the Russian city of Sochi.
Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014, colonizing its Crimean peninsula and fueling violence by pro-Russia separatist groups in the eastern Donbass region for nearly a decade. In February, however, the tenor of the war changed as Putin announced a nationwide assault on Ukraine, sending the Russian military into the country officially and targeting its capital and areas far west of Donbass. As of this week, Ukrainian leaders claim to have regained ground against Russian forces in the nation’s south, though reports of Russian bombing of key infrastructure facilities such as power plants have left many unoccupied parts of the nation largely unable to function.
The Ukraine war is of particular importance to Africa because many nations on the continent rely on Russian or Ukrainian grain to feed their populations. Russian blockades at Ukrainian ports, which eased only a month ago, severely jeopardized Africa’s food supply.
In his message on Tuesday, Bobi Wine did not offer much detail on why he had traveled to Kyiv or if he had planned meetings with senior Ukrainian leaders. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has often made time for celebrity visitors as a means of elevating continued awareness of the war, most prominently taking time for discussions on the war with comedians Ben Stiller and Jimmy Fallon.
Wine posted a photo in front of the headquarters of state media outlet Ukrinform on Tuesday with the caption, “if the dictators stand by each other, the democrats should stand by each other too. It’s dangerous but noble.”
On Wednesday, Wine posted a photo alongside former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, a pro-West leader who was famously poisoned and disfigured during his 2004 presidential campaign, dubbed the “Orange Revolution.”
Kenyan news outlets noted that Wine also met with former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, once a presidential frontrunner prior to her arrest under the presidency of ousted pro-Russian leader Wiktor Yanukovych and the political rise of former sitcom star Zelensky.
Wine’s support for Ukraine stands in contrast to years of friendly ties between the Ugandan president, Museveni, and the Putin regime.
Museveni has personally abstained from incendiary remarks against Ukraine, but in June greenlit a special program to allow the Russian propaganda network RT to broadcast daily in Uganda, sharing its version of events in the war.
Museveni is far from an outlier in Africa. Zelensky has attempted, but largely failed, to court the support of the African Union in the war, blaming Russia for delays in grain shipments that could lead many on the continent to starve. Rather that criticize Russia for invading a neighboring country, many African leaders have repeated Moscow’s argument that Western states courting new European members of NATO, and Zelensky seeking membership for Ukraine, made the war inevitable.
“The war could have been avoided if NATO had heeded the warnings from amongst its own leaders and officials over the years that its eastward expansion would lead to greater, not less, instability in the region,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said in March. South Africa is one of Russia’s closest allies in the region, a member of the BRICS trade bloc alongside India, China, and Brazil.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov received a warm welcome in four African countries during a tour in July, including Uganda, designed to build support for the country in the face of Western sanctions on Russian goods. Lavrov became the highest-ranking Russian official to ever visit Uganda, meeting with Museveni – who emphasized his desire to increase trade with Moscow as much of the free world called for more sanctions.
In an apparent slight to Zelensky, Museveni said of Lavrov’s visit, “we want to make our own enemies not fight other people’s enemies.”
Lavrov also visited Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Republic of the Congo during the same tour.
Elsewhere in Africa, longtime opposition to Western European states fostered support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. In Mali, for example, protesters organized a rally in May in which attendees waved Russian flags and shouted “down with France!”, an apparent reference to France’s support for Kyiv.