This does not surprise me, but it does irritate me.
Many russians know that the soviets set up special communist schools for so-called leaders of african nations and other turd world countries to reach out to those people. This is typical soviet doctrine of a stalinesque ideology. Meaning, reach out to the poor and destitute pockets of society, imply that the communist method is the best and verbalize that is the only way towards hope. Extend a 'free' education to the turd world citizendry. I think you guys get the point.
The technique is startlingly similar to terrorist recruiting and for good reason the russians did train the early jihadists/izlamofacists. The fact that many middle eastern countries have soviet weapons should prove that.
I think a big reason why America is not able to gain the kind of traction in the middle east is because of the almost machiavillian political landscape in russia, middle east and africa.