Bukavu falls to M23 as Tshisekedi skips AU summit over eastern Congo crisis

# Bukavu falls to M23 as Tshisekedi skips AU summit over eastern Congo crisis

*Event date: 2025-02-14*

M23 fighters and Rwandan troops entered Bukavu, the capital of South Kivu province, on 2025-02-14, as Congolese President Félix Tshisekedi canceled plans to attend an African Union summit and accused Rwanda of fueling the conflict.

The RFI report describes a rapid collapse of resistance in and around the city, where fighters reportedly met virtually no resistance after seizing the main airport. Bukavu is a major eastern Congolese city of around one million people, and its loss marked a further escalation in a conflict already spreading across the region.

The political response was immediate. A government source told AFP that Tshisekedi would not attend the AU summit in Ethiopia because he needed to closely follow the situation on the ground. That choice reflects how central the crisis has become to Kinshasa’s agenda. The president’s absence from the summit also showed that the fighting had pushed beyond military significance and into regional diplomacy.

Tshisekedi’s language was forceful. He denounced what he called Rwanda’s expansionist ambitions in the mineral-rich region and urged decisive international sanctions against Kigali. The report also notes that Kinshasa accuses Rwanda of seeking to steal abundant natural resources, including gold and rare earth minerals used in batteries and other devices.

The battle for Bukavu matters because it gives M23 control over another major urban center near Lake Kivu and deepens fears of a wider regional conflict. The city sits at a crossroads where local instability can quickly spill across borders. Neighboring countries are already deeply entangled: the report says several states have troops on the ground in the DRC, and Burundi briefly shut its border to fleeing Congolese from Goma and Bukavu amid the pressure on civilians.

Humanitarian consequences were already visible. Shops and businesses in Bukavu had closed as civilians fled. Elsewhere in the east, the UN warned of cholera risks, shortages and mass displacement around Goma, which M23 had seized earlier. The scale of the crisis is not just the loss of territory but the human displacement and infrastructure damage that follows.

The broader diplomatic struggle remains unresolved. Rwanda denies the accusations and says it is defending itself from armed groups, especially the FDLR. The AP-style accusations and denials have become part of the conflict’s political background, but the immediate fact is that the rebels, with Rwandan backing, had entered another provincial capital.

For Tshisekedi, skipping the AU summit was a sign that the crisis had reached a level where even regional multilateral diplomacy could not proceed normally. For civilians in eastern Congo, the more pressing reality was that the front line had moved again.

Claim-to-source map

• M23 fighters and Rwandan troops entered Bukavu: RFI (3484)
• Tshisekedi canceled his AU summit trip and blamed Rwanda’s expansionist ambitions: RFI (3484)
• Shops closed and civilians fled as the city fell: RFI (3484)
• The report says the crisis threatens wider regional stability and displacement: RFI (3484)