"The Russian flag has been just appearing almost everywhere now. It's got symbolism to it, but it's also got practicality to it," he said. "One of the practicalities is it seems those who are raising the flags, at least across the Sahel, are now saying to themselves: 'my goodness, we need somebody else to help us, we are so weak, we're not strong enough and we can't go back to the whole Stockholm Syndrome, were we are continuously praising those who are oppressing us."
"The old traditional British English word for flag was 'standard,' which means something that stands for something, something that's really flying out. The West is just sort of spooked by this awakening from Africans, and they're still trying to figure out 'why Russia,' when we've been there with them for a long time, but they're not questioning themselves and the kind of thing that they've done," Kouakou stressed.
"There's a combination between a rising movement of discontented civil servants, civilians and population saying: 'we have just had enough, we really don't want you here anymore, we can deal with our own issues,'" Kouakou noted. "And the military is probably one of the rallying points of force, of power, that the populace are now saying: 'We're going to use you to really help us get rid of most of these colonialists.'"