The United States imposed new sanctions on Rwanda on Wednesday, accusing it of further support for a rebel militia in the Democratic Republic of Congo, nearly a year after President Trump hailed a U.S.-brokered peace between the countries.
Top Rwandan and Congolese diplomats signed the peace agreement, called the Washington Accords, last June. In December, Mr. Trump said the deal had “ended” the bloody war between Rwanda, Congo and each side’s allies.
The Treasury Department, though, said on Wednesday that Rwanda was still supporting the rebel group, M23, and thus undermining the peace. As a consequence, the department said, it imposed sanctions on Rwanda’s Ministry of Defense and a Rwandan financial institution for supporting the powerful militia.
“Today, the United States makes good on President Trump’s promise to hold Rwanda accountable for its commitments under the Washington Accords for Peace and Prosperity,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. “Rwanda must halt its support for M23 and withdraw its troops from eastern D.R.C.”
In response, Rwanda said the United States had failed to punish Congo’s government for its support of a rebel group that has ties to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The two countries have accused each other of supporting adversarial militia groups in eastern Congo, where the conflict has roots in that genocide.
Thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced in the current fighting. M23 and Rwanda’s armed forces are aligned on one side, against the Congolese army and its allies, including South African and Burundian soldiers, and mercenaries employed by the American military contractor Erik Prince and others.
A spokeswoman for the Rwandan government, which has long had close ties to the United States, said it still wanted to abide by the U.S.-brokered pact.
“Rwanda remains ready to fully implement the Washington Accords, concurrently with the willingness of the D.R.C. to fulfill those commitments, and with the mediator holding all parties accountable,” Yolande Makolo, the spokeswoman, said in text message.
The new U.S. sanctions, though, widen a rift that began not long after the peace deal was signed and threatened the close relations built by the United States and Rwanda in the aftermath of the genocide. In the decades that followed, U.S. administrations praised Rwanda’s efforts to rebuild and play a role in peacekeeping operations in Africa.
The United States said on Wednesday that it was punishing Rwanda after M23 launched a new political arm and appeared to strengthen its hold over the eastern Congo. This month, the militia and its affiliates founded what they called the Front for the Refoundation of the Nation, led by Joseph Kabila, Congo’s former president.
The group is a replacement for the Congo River Alliance, a political arm of the rebel movement that has called for the overthrow of Congo’s government, U.S. officials said.
The Treasury Department also imposed sanctions on the Zigama Credit and Savings Society, a savings cooperative in Rwanda, which U.S. officials accused of facilitating payments for weapons, ammunition and military equipment for the Rwanda Defense Force in its support of M23. The United States put sanctions on the defense force in March, saying it had violated Mr. Trump’s peace deal.
That was followed in June by sanctions on a gold refining company associated with Rwandan government officials and M23 rebels, which was accused of funding the rebel group.
The M23 rebel group has seized large parts of eastern Congo, a mineral-rich region plagued by decades of instability and violent conflict. After a bloody offensive in 2025, the rebel group took control over the major city of Goma, and with Rwanda’s support has advanced in the region despite signing the peace accord, U.S. officials said.
M23 was founded in 2012, its name a reference to its claim that the Congolese government failed to honor an earlier peace agreement, signed on March 23, 2009.
For years, Congolese officials have accused Rwanda of backing M23, which invaded Congo in 2021. Rwandan officials said that people of the Hutu ethnic group living in eastern Congo who had been responsible for the 1994 genocide of Tutsi people were still operating in Congo. Like Rwanda’s leaders, M23 is mostly made up of people from the Tutsi ethnic group.
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