San Francisco Frontiers - DR Congo says Rwanda flouting pact, US sanctions justified

Therese Kayikwamba Wagner said DR Congo had made progress in its promise, made under the same US-brokered deal with Rwanda, to neutralise a militia that Kigali says is a cross-border threat.

"We think it's very important to have sanctions. First of all, the sanctions establish the truth! Rwanda signed the Washington agreement and has been consistently violating them," she said.

"Rwanda has fallen short of its main commitment under Washington agreement to withdraw troops that are illegally in the Democratic Republic of Congo and the consequences are being felt," she told AFP in an interview.

"The fact that there are sanctions establishes the fact that there have been violations."

In December, DR Congo and Rwanda endorsed a Washington-brokered peace agreement but it did not end the fighting.

Kinshasa is seeking the withdrawal of Rwandan forces from its territory.

Kigali makes this conditional on the neutralisation of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), an armed group founded by former Rwandan Hutu officials responsible for the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi, and active in eastern DRC.

The United States on Wednesday imposed sanctions on the Rwandan defence ministry and a financial institution in the central African country over their alleged ties to the M23 armed group fighting in DR Congo.

The M23 movement has seized swathes of the eastern DRC -- home to valuable minerals coveted by world powers -- since it took up arms again in 2021.

- 'Aiding a criminal' -

An offensive by the M23 and the Rwandan army in eastern DRC in early 2025 resulted in the capture of Goma and Bukavu, the capitals of North and South Kivu provinces.

Since then, the front line has stabilised, though South Kivu in particular has seen fierce clashes.

Wagner said Kinshasa had "committed" to neutralise the FDLR and "eliminate the pretext that Kigali has been using and recycling for over 30 years in order to violate our territorial integrity and in order to occupy parts of our country".

Former president Joseph Kabila this month joined forces with the Rwanda-backed M23 movement to take a direct role in an insurgency ravaging the DRC's mineral-rich east, returning to the fray at a febrile time for Congolese politics.

Taking aim at the government in Kinshasa, the new Kabila-helmed Front for the Refoundation of the Nation (FRN) vowed to put "an end to tyranny by any means, including force".

Referring to Kabila and the supposed backing of foreign countries, Wagner said: "Aiding and abetting a criminal has consequences.

"These leaders will have with time to own the role that they played or didn't play to stop violence, suffering in the eastern part of the DRC," she said.

"They will also have to answer to their very own people, because we believe that no African people think that the suffering of the Congolese people is justified."

K.Gray--SFF