Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held talks with the Chairperson of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki, on the Libyan file and the situation in the Sahel region.

Lavrov said, in a joint press conference with Faki in Moscow, that Russia's relations with the African Union "are developing in various fields", as confirmed by the first summit between Russia and Africa in October 2019 in Sochi.

He continued, "we have been cooperating closely on a variety of issues since then, and most recently we participated in the Paris International Conference on Libya."

The two sides discussed the situation in Libya, the Sahel and Sudan and the “continuing and exacerbating terrorist threat from various extremist groups on the African continent, in addition to developing cooperation in the field of combating international terrorism, piracy and other forms of cross-border crime and drug smuggling.”