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Since 2014, when sanctions following the annexation of Crimea forced Putin to find new markets and partners beyond the West’s regulatory reach, Russia has made a concerted effort to expand into Africa. It hasn’t had much effect. Today, only 3.7 percent of Russian goods end up in Africa. With more than 2.7 percent getting gobbled up by North Africa, a paltry fraction is destined for the bulk of the continent. It’s even worse in reverse, as African goods account for just 1.1 percent of Russian imports. The Sochi summit was supposed to change all this. However, there’s not much to suggest that it will. Of the $12.5 billion in deals that were allegedly signed, most were only memorandums of understanding that may never get off the ground.

Other than arms, of which Russia continues to be the continent’s key supplier, there is little it has to offer and less that Africa will take. For now, it’s hard to see how Putin’s plan to find new partners, make more money, and restart the Russian economy will succeed.

“The superpowers that are competing on this continent will determine the future of the world’s agenda,” Russian State Duma Deputy Anton Morozov awkwardly announced to a room full of African officials on the second day of the summit.

treating African states as easy-to-manipulate pawns is not only ethically and intellectually questionable—it’s also strategically silly

Judd Devermont of the Center for Strategic and International Studies explained, “The Russians go all in on the incumbent.”

As Omar al-Bashir was fighting to hold on to his blood-soaked dictatorship in the recent revolution, Russian actors swooped in with a misinformation plan to save him. They didn’t, and today Bashir is behind bars. Although the Russian-Sudanese relationship has resumed, it was a costly error in a country that can offer not only gold and oil, but also the Red Sea naval base that is one of Putin’s top priorities.

In 2018, associates of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the man who is believed to have masterminded Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, trotted out similar tactics to disrupt a race in Madagascar. The idea was to use a troll farm to influence voter opinion by manipulating online media. However, in a nation where internet penetration is just 9.8 percent, about a quarter of what it is on average across the continent, the troll farm did not make a dent. The Kremlin’s candidates went on to lose, and subsequent allegations of bribes to Malagasy officials further sullied the Russian image.

in Libya, Russia has had even less luck. Two of the same Russian nationals who botched the Madagascar plot were found in July to be attempting to influence Libya’s recent elections. The Russians’ clueless antics got the duo arrested—no easy feat in a country that, according to Freedom House, entirely lacks both an electoral democracy and the rule of law.

Although Putin has had success with many of his assertive endeavors in Europe and the Middle East—polarizing publics, aiding politicians, annexing eastern Ukraine, and turning the tide of the Syrian civil war—his aggressive maneuvering in Africa has come with clear costs. “When Russia overplays its hand, Africans have distanced themselves,” Devermont said.

African states naturally have their own political preferences that are not always up for sale or at one leader’s mercy. When Russia courts ruling elites and tries to undermine democratic elections, it ignores basic trends on the continent. In the latest round of polling from Afrobarometer, Africa’s leading public survey firm, 75 percent of respondents expressed their commitment to free and fair elections.

Today, just 0.0005 percent of Africans believe that Russia serves as the best development model for their country, an Afrobarometer spokesperson told Foreign Policy. What’s more, the spokesperson said, the percentage of Africans who believe that Russia has the greatest foreign influence in their country was “lost among the ‘Others.’”

As role models and political partners, the United States and China are leaps and bounds beyond Russia. Polling from Afrobarometer shows the United States to be the most desired development model on the continent, attracting approval from 30 percent of Africans. China, meanwhile, comes in second with 24 percent. The rankings reverse for greatest foreign influence: 23 percent of Africans believe China to be the most prominent noncolonial power in their country, while 22 percent of Africans believe the United States holds that distinction.

there is a clear path for Putin to catch up—with Washington at least. Last year, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a large military drawdown that comes even as there is crucial anti-terrorism work left to do against Boko Haram in the west, al Shabab in the east, al Qaeda in the north, and the Islamic State in the south. In addition, Trump has shown total diplomatic indifference to the continent, having not sent a senior aide to Africa since former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited last year (and was fired while he was there), having never paid a visit himself, and having filled the key role of the ambassador to South Africa with a fashion designer and Republican donor with no diplomatic experience.

As with U.S. missteps in the Middle East, Trump’s Africa policy, or lack thereof, has paved the way for Russia’s rise. “It’s another case where we’re withdrawing and Putin is moving in to fill the vacuum,” McFaul, the former ambassador, said

Regularly referencing its own encounters with Western imperialism, Beijing has proved quite adept at using a global south narrative to paint its engagement with Africa as one of mutual respect and noninterference.

At the 2015 and 2018 Forums on China-Africa Cooperation, Chinese President Xi Jinping declared his goal of “the building of a new model of international partnership” and changing “the global governance system.”

China has what Russia does not and what the United States, preoccupied with other problems, has been unwilling or unable to use: cash

One thing the great-power framing also fails to take into account is how African states, like all states, can maintain multiple partnerships. It is a basic diplomatic fact that offers particular benefits in Africa, McFaul said, given that the “U.S., Russia, and China play in different lanes.” Nigeria, which announced a new arms agreement in Sochi, is one such beneficiary. At the same time as Russia can equip the country to provide security in its volatile oil-rich southeast, China has helped fund and build its oil infrastructure, and the United States has bought its oil by the billions of dollars. On second look, the mistaken zero-sum framing becomes a positive-sum bonanza.

"regardless of whether Russia invades Ukraine again, Belarus’s territory will increasingly become a source of military threats to all its western neighbors, not just Ukraine."

Italy’s parliamentary committee for security, Copasir, last week opened a probe into disinformation, in response to widespread concerns that Italian news outlets are being used to spread the pro-Putin line.

In perhaps the most egregious example of a top Russian official exploiting western media for disinformation, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov appeared in an interview on a privately-owned TV channel founded by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. He used the occasion to assert falsehoods virtually unchallenged, including an inflammatory assertion that Adolf Hitler had “Jewish blood” — a remark for which Putin ultimately had to apologize to Israel. The European Commission was forced to remind EU broadcasters that they “must not allow incitement to violence, hatred and Russian propaganda in their talk shows.”

Italy is often seen as a soft touch for Kremlin disinformation and a potential Trojan horse in Europe because of historic ties to Russia based on strong economic ties and the largest Communist party in the west.

Putin built a warm relationship with Berlusconi, based on shared economic interests. Over the past decade, and even after the annexation of Crimea, Putin has engaged with the rise in populist and anti-establishment parties — and especially the far-right League party — who saw him as a fellow adversary of the EU and global western elites

The Italy media landscape is more polluted than other countries, she said. “The talk shows fail to give context, distinguish between opinion and facts. They care more about creating a show and ratings.”

Italian TV stations were forced to apologize after publishing a graphic that apparently showed NATO biological laboratories underneath the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, but was in reality drawn from an apocalypse-themed board game.  

The Fatto Quotidiano newspaper published a full-page article blaming the U.S. and the EU for “the massacre that is taking place in Ukraine” so favorable to Russia it was retweeted by the Russian Embassy in Italy.

Italy’s distinctive political talk show tradition, strong on melodrama and orchestrated arguments and light on fact-checking and tough interviews, that is causing the most commotion. The all-in-one politics and show-business format began with shows such as Rita Dalla Chiesa’s Parlamento In, on Berlusconi’s private TV channels in the 1980s, but was soon imitated by the state broadcaster Rai.

The talk shows “are a kind of infotainment,” said Romano. “The objective is to create a row not inform.”

The parliamentary investigation will look at how talk show guests are selected and whether they had been paid by the Kremlin

As far as Lavrov’s appearance goes, Berlusconi’s Mediaset defended the interview saying it confirmed Putin’s unwillingness to arrive at a diplomatic solution and therefore allowed us to learn something about the Russian leadership. On the same evening, another channel interviewed Vladimir Soloviev, a presenter on Russian state TV, who is subject to sanctions, and described by the U.S. State department as the Kremlin’s most energetic propagandist today.

Romano, the MP, agrees. “We cannot treat facts and opinions with equal value, you wouldn’t have Goebbels debate Anne Frank about the Holocaust.”

Russia’s efforts to disorient Italians seem to be working. According to a recent poll, half of Italians think coverage of Ukraine is distorted. And 25 percent say they don’t believe the media on Ukraine. Italians are also far less supportive of arming Ukrainians than other Western allies, with only around 30 percent in favor of sending more weapons compared to around 60 percent in the U.K. and U.S., according to polls.

Head of Rai Carlo Fuortes has suggested it may finally be time to rethink the talk show format, to avoid inflammatory debates at the expense of serious and informed exchanges.