Ukraine War: Why Putin couldn’t train fighters in Africa

A black and white image which some people falsely claim shows Russian President Vladimir Putin training liberation movements in southern Africa, has been circulating.

It has been used by some to justify why African countries should support Russia in the war in Ukraine.

The image was also posted on Twitter by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s son.

But it doesn’t show Mr Putin in Africa, and the time when people are claiming it was taken is also incorrect.

Putin wasn’t in Tanzania

The photograph was widely shared online after it was posted in Zimbabwean blogs at the end of 2018.

The posts claimed it shows Mr Putin in a Tanzanian military training camp for southern African independence movements in 1973.

Also present in the photo, it was claimed, were future Mozambique President Samora Machel and Emmerson Mnangagwa, now the president of Zimbabwe.

“Putin stayed in Tanzania training freedom fighters for four years from 1973 to 1977,” the blogs also claimed.

However, there is no evidence either from Russian or African records of Mr Putin, who was born in 1952, having been to the continent during the 1970s.

Mr Putin’s profile on the Kremlin website shows that he was studying at the Leningrad State University at the time, and graduated in 1975.

Also outside training offered to Mozambican freedom fighters in camps in Tanzania was largely conducted by Chinese instructors, not Soviet ones.

And Mr Mnangagwa could not have been in Tanzania in 1973 as he was arrested in 1965 and imprisoned for 10 years by the white-minority government in then Rhodesia.