Michael Jones

"Russia's distance from the RSF is linked both to a decrease in gold flows to Russia, but also to a port facility project that would best serve Russia's strategic interests," said Michael Jones, an expert on armed conflicts in East Africa and sub-Saharan Africa at the British think tank RUSI.

“While the impact of Russian assistance depends on the content and scope of the support package itself, it is unlikely to have any transformative effect on the conflict,” research fellow Michael Jones of the Royal United Services Institute told Byline Times. “Even if a substantial influx of weaponry and materiel facilitated local breakthroughs across Khartoum or along axes further south, a decisive military victory remains doubtful. […] Russian support would likely simply prolong the conflict; disincentivising the generals from entertaining peace-talks while doing little to substantively redress the overall balance of forces.”

The United Kingdom’s controversial merger of its aid and foreign affairs departments has delivered “benefits” for development work in key countries in East Africa, a study based on almost 200 interviews argues. The 2020 creation of the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office — widely criticized as chaotic for aid delivery — “shows early promise” toward its aim of integrating policy objectives, the Royal United Service Institute think tank found. ... “We found benefits, through our research, for the delivery of aid and development, although this was not across the board,” one of the study’s authors, Michael Jones, told Devex. “There were tangible examples where aid, development and diplomatic engagement had married up in an interesting way, for example, in Ethiopia, over conflict de-escalation and respect for humanitarian law.”