Between strategic neglect and geopolitical realities: Ukraine and North Africa in Light of Russian Aggression

Abstract

ABSTRACT Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has moved the latter and its foreign policy into the limelight. Since Ukraine's independence in 1991, the scholarly literature has focused overwhelmingly on its path towards European integration and its relationship with NATO and Russia respectively. Systematic accounts of Ukrainian foreign policy and Ukraine’s relations with actors outside the post-Soviet, European and transatlantic context are, however, largely missing. This applies also to Ukraine’s relations with countries in North Africa, notably Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco. Geographically and culturally distant, and in the absence of reverberating historical legacies, successive Ukrainian governments have neglected the region while passively observing how Russia, particularly in recent years, has widened its regional influence. This profile sheds light on Ukraine’s relations with North Africa and offers an empirical contribution to the analysis of Ukraine’s evolving foreign policy in light of Russian military aggression since 2014. It argues that Ukraine needs to develop a more complex foreign policy that goes beyond EU and NATO membership. To gain full ownership over bilateral developments, in times of conflict and crisis, Ukraine has to adapt to geopolitical realities and attend to a wider range of countries, such as the ones in North Africa.