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Lavrov met with Guinea's foreign minister Morissanda Kouyaté, according to Russia's foreign ministry. Guinea's government in a statement said the meeting was to discuss areas of mutual cooperation, without elaborating.

Lavrov was expected to arrive in the Republic of Congo late on Monday evening, where he was due to meet President Denis Sassou N’Guesso in the city of Oyo, according to an official communique from Brazzaville. It wasn't clear which other countries were on his itinerary later this week.

Guinea has been ruled by since 2021. Col. Mamadi Doumbouya seized power saying he was preventing Guinea from slipping into chaos and accusing the previous government of broken promises. In February, military leaders without explanation, saying a new one will be appointed.

Doumbouya has rebuffed attempts by the West and other developed countries to intervene in Africa’s political challenges, saying Africans are “exhausted by the categorizations with which everyone wants to box us in.”

Several West African nations including Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso have had coups that installed military juntas. They have severed or scaled back long-standing military ties with Western powers in favor of security support from Russia.

Lavrov early last year and pledged military support. Also last year, he — seen as the most significant of several African nations to take a neutral stance on the war in Ukraine — and returned there to of BRICS bloc nations. He also visited Kenya in an outreach in East Africa.

Lavrov late last year , where Russia also seeks to strengthen ties in the vacuum created by the diminishing popularity of Western powers.

In West Africa, the military junta governing ousted French forces last year and turned to Russia for security support. And in , Russian military trainers arrived weeks after the junta that took power last year U.S. troops to withdraw from the country.

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Associated Press writer Louis Patrick Okamba in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, contributed to this report.