There are several ways to interpret what happened at the UN Security Council on Friday night into Saturday. Mine is this:
− First, the veto changes nothing in the face of the eleven votes in favor of the American draft, which lays bare Algeria’s diplomatic isolation.
– Second, by casting this veto, Russia was merely thanking a “client” who, after behaving badly towards it, had returned sheepishly to the master’s house.
In recent years, Algeria, something of a rudderless ship on the diplomatic seas, had forgotten that in international politics, one must know how to choose one’s friends and, above all, not play a double game with them. Russia has now driven that elementary lesson home to Algeria, which, swallowing its pride, returned to the Russian alliance, abandoning and thereby betraying its Sahelian “friends,” particularly the Tuareg. And it was the price of that betrayal that Russia paid “in cash” with its veto at the UN Security Council on Friday, October 30, 2026.
It is worth recalling that a year earlier, on October 31, 2025, Russia abstained on the very same issue, leaving its longstanding Algerian ally thoroughly isolated. What, then, happened to make Moscow reverse its vote so completely? To answer that question, we must look back.
Russia’s arrival on the Sahelian scene completely upended Algeria’s regional strategy. Traditionally, that strategy had involved supporting Tuareg movements, to varying degrees and with varying levels of direct involvement, depending on the circumstances. This inevitably created tensions with the southern-based regimes opposed to separatism. Yet Algeria, lacking the foresight to recognize that the circumstances had changed, found itself trapped by Sahelian dynamics it could no longer control.
Worse still, Algiers failed to grasp that, as Moscow sought to reshape the wider Mediterranean-Sahara-Sahel geopolitical landscape, a rapprochement between Mali and Algeria—two Russian allies at odds with one another—was a prerequisite. The problem was that Algeria had failed to see that, by pursuing its existing Sahel policy, it was colliding head-on with the strategy of its longstanding Russian ally, which was also virtually its sole military supplier. Russia was backing the southern-based juntas in power against rebellions in the north, while Algeria was supporting those very same northern rebellions.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov therefore made it clear to Algiers that the time had come to “return to the fold.” This “persuasion” came in two stages:
- By denying Algeria admission to BRICS. Lavrov was unequivocal, emphasizing “convergence of views” as a criterion for membership, with Russia favoring countries that shared a “common understanding of the international order.”
- On October 31, 2025, when Russia abstained on UN Security Council Resolution 2797 concerning the so-called “Western” Sahara. By declining to exercise its veto, Moscow left Algeria to confront its diplomatic isolation alone.
Having taken these two warnings to heart, Algeria abandoned the Tuareg before rushing to the military aid of the regime in Niger. In return, Russia rewarded it by exercising its veto at the UN Security Council this time. Algeria has now gone to Canossa, and whatever regional diplomatic autonomy it retains will be confined to the limits Moscow chooses to impose or allow.
Yet Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister and architect of Algeria’s change of course, understands the region far too well to confuse the Sahel question with that of the so-called “Western” Sahara, whose settlement through Morocco’s autonomy plan enjoys overwhelming international support. Russia has no interest in opening a diplomatic front over this issue. It nevertheless faces a considerable problem: finding a way for Algeria to save face.
