how a Russia-backed junta leader became an icon

“God protect Ibrahim Traoré,” croons teary-eyed American R&B singer R Kelly, over footage of the 37-year-old military leader of Burkina Faso leading troops into battle and marching through adoring crowds. “He is the voice of the people.”

The video, which has garnered nearly 2mn views, is an obvious, AI-generated fake (Kelly is serving a prison sentence for sex trafficking).

But it is part of a proliferation of real and imagined tributes to Traoré who, since taking power in a 2022 coup, has been transformed from an obscure military officer to an anti-western icon on the continent.

In office, Traoré has launched anti-corruption drives, sought to wrest greater control of Burkina Faso’s mineral riches from global mining companies and realign away from former colonial ruler France and towards Russia.

This, helped by the photogenic junta leader’s distinctive red beret and military fatigues, has carried well beyond the borders of the country of 23mn people. It has also tapped into a well of frustration among Africans fed up with rampant violence, dysfunctional democratic systems and western meddling.

“There is the beatification of Traoré: the cult of Saint Traoré,” Ebenezer Obadare, a senior fellow for Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said.

In recent weeks, widely shared images on TikTok and other social media platforms include a real photo of Traoré playing football. Another debunked post celebrates his construction of a low-cost housing project (the site is actually in Algeria). Former UK MP George Galloway has repeatedly praised him, and earlier this month claimed France and the US were “clearly committed” to killing Traoré.

“People love him,” said Jean, a 30-something resident of Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou, where thousands rallied in Traoré’s support last month after a US military official accused him of corruption and the junta said it foiled a “major” coup attempt. “He’s saying things about independence from France and greater control. People like hearing that.”

David Hundeyin, a Nigerian journalist who has posted positively about Traoré on social media to his more than 1mn followers, said he supported what he described as Traoré’s “ideology” of economic self-reliance and anti-imperialism.

Hundeyin said similar policies would help address problems in countries including his own, where democracy was far from the “gold standard”.

“I don’t believe that Nigeria is a more democratic place or is a better place to live in than Burkina Faso,” he said. “They’re both awful places to live in . . . but I feel the primary economic and political issue is being addressed in Burkina Faso.”

The effusive online praise has helped obscure Traoré’s chequered record in Burkina Faso, which has become the epicentre of the security crisis in west Africa and where the government controls less than half of its territory.

Traoré has been accused of building a personality cult, and his government has clamped down on the press, civil society and political opponents, even conscripting dissidents — including doctor and prominent critic Arouna Louré — into the military.

CFR’s Obadare argued that, while many Africans were rightly frustrated by the “lethargy” of the continent’s democratic systems, Traoré’s emerging popularity was “far more sinister”.

“There is this knee-jerk and robotic anti-westernism that means once someone shows up to say they hate the west, we automatically believe in that person.”

Patrick Gathara, a public intellectual in Kenya, where Traoré has also become a minor cause célèbre, said: “There is a romanticisation of what he’s doing. But we’ve seen where military takeovers take countries, and I’m not convinced this is going to bode well.”

Traoré, a former special forces officer, came to power alongside military leaders in Mali and Niger in a wave of coups in the Sahel, the semi-arid strip south of the Sahara, promising to restore security in countries wracked by Islamist and sectarian violence.

Mali’s leader, Assimi Goïta, has won similar acclaim from some African intellectuals and personalities who say they admire him for expelling French troops and standing up to international mining companies.

The French “themselves have contributed to the decline of their influence, because they have a paternalistic view of our relationships”, Traoré — who styles himself after 20th century Burkinabe revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara — told Russian media this month.

Traoré has found a ready ally in Russia. Moscow reopened its embassy in Burkina Faso in 2023 after a 31-year absence following the fall of the Soviet Union, while Russian paramilitary group Bear Brigade spent months in the country last year guarding junta officials, including Traoré.

Obadare suggested that some of the online attention towards Traoré was reminiscent of the sorts of influence campaigns run by Russian paramilitary groups such as Wagner, which has previously promoted propaganda advocating for Moscow’s interests abroad.

“Russia is holding up Traoré as the second coming of Thomas Sankara (the former leader, who was assassinated in 1987),” he said. “Not because they genuinely think there’s anything to him in terms of ideology and good governance, but because they want to undermine democracy, western values, France, the west and the US.”

Yet Cheta Nwanze, partner at Lagos-based consultancy SBM Intelligence, said it would be a mistake to underestimate the genuine support for Traoré among Africans.

Western support for longtime authoritarian leaders such as Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame is regarded as a double standard at odds with the west’s stated commitment to democratic ideals, he said.

And surveys by pollster Afrobarometer show that, while a majority of Africans said they preferred democracy to other forms of government, more than half of those surveyed would accept coups if they removed politicians who “abuse power for their own ends”.

Preference for democracy in Burkina Faso dropped 17 points to 55 per cent between 2021 and 2023, a significantly bigger slide than over the continent as a whole, though in democratic South Africa it dropped 29 points, to 43 per cent.

Nwanze said many Africans remained disillusioned with the west, opening the space for others. “When you put all these things in context, it becomes easy for a geopolitical adversary of the west [such as Russia] to paint a picture that many would look at admiringly.”

But Hundeyin, the journalist who supports Traoré, dismissed hysteria over Russian influence. Flawed elections in so-called democracies such as Nigeria had sown the seeds of disillusion more than any Moscow propaganda, he said.

“Let’s say there is some sort of Russian involvement: what makes that such a terrible thing?” he asked. For those opposed to him, “Ibrahim Traoré could heal the sick, raise the dead and make every woman in Burkina Faso happy — it wouldn’t make any difference.”

Additional reporting by David Pilling in London