Russia's presence in Africa depends heavily on the Wagner Group, headed by Yevgeny Prighozin. But now there is uncertainty about the private military's role after his apparent death in a plane crash in Russia.
Philipp Sandner
Malians welcomed the Wagner Group in the hope they would help defeat the Islamist insurgency
Florent Vergnes/AFP/Getty Images
Russia's influence in Africa is intertwined with the mercenary activities of the Wagner Group in various countries, particularly in West and Central Africa. Next to China, Russia has become the main global player exerting its influence on the continent through aid and economic development, but also through trade and military cooperation.
But following reports that Wagner's leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, might have died in a plane crash in Russia, many now wonder if military support from Russia in Africa will remain unchanged.
Business as usual in CAR
In an exclusive interview with DW, Fidele Gouandjika, an advisor to Central African Republic (CAR) President Faustin-Archange Touadera, said that bilateral relations between his country and Russia would remain the same.
"We have a defense agreement with Russia, and the paramilitarias who are with us will continue their work as before. They will find another chief," he told DW.
"As for trade relations, we have a mining license, a brewery and a forestry license with the Russians. That will not change, even if Yevgeny Prigozhin is no longer there."
However, not everyone shares this optimistic view: Since a comprehensive peace agreement was reached in CAR only in February 2019 after decades of civil war, the Wagner Group's influence has extended even further. Wagner mercenaries have been in charge of protecting — and guiding — Touadera,whose advisors have long included a man with closer ties to Prigozhin.
This monument of Russian soldiers was erected in CAR's capital Bangui in honor of Russia's security contribution
Barbara Debout/AFP
CAR: A hostage of Wagner?
Former Communications Minister Adrien Poussou, who is also the author of the book "Africa Doesn't Need Putin," regards Wagner as practically pulling every string in the country now: "President Touadera is a hostage of Wagner, and he knows it," Poussou told DW.
"So despite the aborted rebellion of the Wagner Group, the situation remains deadlocked until an even bigger power interferes in this dance."
The CAR government has described the idea that it has lost control as "nonsense."
Still, even more measured voices have expressed their concern over the extent of Wagner's influence — with or without Prigozhin — in CAR: Paul Crescent Beninga, a civil society representative, says that the Wagner Group's interference in CAR's internal political affairs has now led to "a point where this undermines the ability of the Central African state to conduct its politics without pressure."
"The Central African Republic is not profiting from these developments," he added. "Rather, the winners are the Russians."
Russia's silence on the latest developments
Meanwhile, Moscow remains silent on the circumstances surrounding the plane crash. The Russian aviation authority claims that Wagner boss Prigozhin was on board and that all 10 occupants are believed dead.
But much is still unclear, including whether foul play was involved.
Before the Prigozhin's attempted coup against Russian President Vladimir Putin in June, the Kremlin had praised Wagner's activities in Africa, especially in Mali and the Central African Republic. Its operations were expected to continue and even expand.
Jean-Pierre Mara, a former lawmaker in the Central African Republic, said there was "no question" that Wagner would continue its operations in Africa, as this was also in Russia's best interest.
Win-win relationship for Russia and Wagner
Russian historian Irina Filatova described Russia's relationship with the Wagner Group in Africa as a "win-win situation," with Wagner benefiting from Russia's prestige and Russian weapons and Russia having preferential access to Africa's natural resources.
"The relationship is very much like the pattern of European trading companies in the 19th century," Filatova told DW, drawing parallels to colonial times.
"They got a mandate from their respective state, acted independently, but the state benefited from their presence in Africa."
Cooperation between the private military and the Russian government occurs, especially where raw materials are abundant, with Wagner controlling the business interests on the continent.
Filatova explained that Russia benefitted from this relationship through Wagner's extensive network of sub-companies: "They can be rebranded or remain under the same name, as they are already a brand in Africa. They can act independently."
Mali's jaw-dropping Wagner bill
Meanwhile, in Mali there's even more financial entanglement between the government and Wagner and its subsidiaries: In late 2021, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a US think tank, identified a new military base being built in the country.
Eyewitnesses on the ground then confirmed that the base was for Wagner troops.
On top of this, reports showed that Mali — one of the poorest countries in the world — was spending $10 million (€9 million) a month on Wagner mercenaries in the country, amounting to more than €100 million annually.
Wagner also has a significant stake in Mali's oil sector, effectively controlling the price of the fossil fuels for export.
Elsewhere, the group is active in mining other riches, including gold. In recent years, a Canadian and a South African company lost their mining licenses, while a Madagascan company — closely linked to Russia — received a new concession.
How each arm of Wagner may position itself in a potential post-Prigozhin future "is totally unclear," historian Filatova stressed, while suggesting that Russia would continue to seek to deepen its influence in Africa.
Mara took it further, explaining that Russia's activities through Wagner in Africa were part of its war strategy in Ukraine: "(Russia) needs the Central African gold, the Malian gold, to finance the war. So nothing will change."
Martina Schwikowski, Bob Barry, Sandrine Blanchard, Jean-Michel Bos and Mahamadou Kane in Bamako contributed to this article
This article was adapted from German by Chrispin Mwakideu and edited by Sertan Sanderson.
It was first published on June 30, 2023, and updated on August 24, 2023
Wagner's brutal work in Africa will be tough for the Kremlin to replace
Roland Oliphant
Thu, 24 August 2023
Wagner's presence in Syria has been much coveted by the Kremlin
For nearly a decade, it was a piratical linchpin of Russian foreign policy: fronting deniable wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and Africa, and growing rich in the process.
But with the death of its chief and his closest deputies, the Wagner private military company may have come to the end of the road.
But the Kremlin may also find the Wagner brand – with its unique mix of hard power and influence in the Middle East and Africa – hard to replace.
Although Yevgeny Prigozhin did not found the Wagner group (he came on board later), he was – as financier and manager – its corporate mastermind and largely responsible for its commercial success.
It was his connections to the Kremlin and gift for building personal connections and corrupt “understandings” that transformed it from one of many rag-tag gangs fighting Russia’s 2014 invasion of Donbas into a globe-trotting mercenary empire.
“Prigozhin had the rare ability to command the loyalty of fighting men and also run deals with local elites,” said Mark Galeotti, an expert on the Russian security services who is currently writing a book about Prigozhin.
“He would not have risen as far and as fast without Vladimir Putin’s patronage. But he was already doing relatively well. In his own way, he was effective as an entrepreneur especially in the environments where Wagner operates.”
Wagner’s global footprint is as broad as it is violent.
In Libya, it works with Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar, the head of the Libyan National Army, and played a major role in his failed assault on Tripoli in 2019. Wagner mercenaries were, at one point, spotted at the Sharara oil field, the country’s largest.
Wagner mercenaries have also been present in Sudan since 2017, where they control a gold processing plant and are reported to have backed the Rapid Support Forces in the civil war that broke out there in April.
In West Africa, Wagner has a contract with the governments of the Central African Republic and Mali, and has obtained gold and other mineral exploitation rights in both.
Burkina Faso has been forced to deny hiring Wagner, but has hailed Russia as a strategic ally, and the group’s “consultants” were rumoured to be in touch with the military officers who carried out a coup in Niger last month – testament to the brand’s notoriety, whatever their real involvement.
This empire was already in trouble before Prigozhin and Wagner’s military founder, Dmitry Utkin, presumably died on Wednesday.
The secret to Prigozhin’s rapid business success – one he shares with a large number of Russian “tycoons” – was Vladimir Putin’s patronage.
It was a generous catering contract with the ministry of defence that provided the seed capital for Wagner’s overseas expansion.
A tight relationship with Russia’s military intelligence (GRU) and the Kremlin ensured Wagner’s access to training facilities, weapons, and the nod for jobs in Syria, Libya, and the central African Republic.
That patronage vanished the moment Prigozhin, Utkin, and many of their fighters rashly decided to mutiny two months ago.
In the treacherous realm where business and government merge, personal connections are vital and losing Putin’s trust is toxic.
Some Wagner bases in Syria were surrounded last month and their commanders interrogated, presumably to assess how much of a threat they posed to Putin’s rule and whether a further coup was being plotted from Damascus.
In July, Reuters reported that many Wagner fighters were forced to sign new contracts with the Russian defence ministry or were simply kicked out of Syria, citing Syrian regime officials. The crackdown suggests that both Bash al-Assad and Putin feel threatened by restive Wagner fighters inside the country.
On Tuesday, one day before Prigozhin’s jet crashed, Yunnus-bek Yevkurov, Russia’s deputy ministry of defence, arrived in Libya for talks with Gen Haftar.
Wagner has been contracted to train Syrian mercenaries
The ministry said in a press release that it was the “first official visit of a Russian military delegation to Libya,” and that the purpose was “to discuss prospects for cooperation in combating international terrorism and other issues of joint action”.
There could be no clearer signal that the army intends to muscle in on Wagner’s turf.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based military think tank, said that the Russian ministry of defence had recently begun forming new mercenary groups to replace Wagner in Africa.
Wagner personnel and commanders were being headhunted for the new groups. Prigozhin’s trip to Africa was probably an attempt to fend off Russian military plans and drum up new missions for Wagner, one Russian insider source told the ISW.
The institute said: “The source claimed that GRU deputy head (head of the special activities service) Colonel General Andrei Averyanov led the effort to completely block Wagner from operating in Africa and that there were plans to create and train an army corps of more than 20,000 people as Wagner replacements.”
The source added that Prigozhin was deeply opposed to these efforts and “made every effort to prevent them”.
Wagner group mercenaries in Mali - French Army via AP
The ministry of defence’s own mercenary outfit, Redoubt, can easily take over Wagner’s fighting roles overseas.
Its founder, GRU general Vladimir Alexeyev, is reported to have clashed with Prigozhin repeatedly over what could be called mercenary market share.
But he lacks Prigozhin’s own knack for finding a rapport and making a deal with local leaders. And Wagner was not simply offering guns for hire.
Prigozhin’s Concord group could provide autocrats with paid internet trolls to paint them as legitimate leaders standing up to al-Qaeda and Islamic State, and “political consultants” to help rig elections.
The commercial structure would provide the business architecture not only to run mines and oil fields, but to smuggle it out of the country, launder the proceeds, and distribute kickbacks.
“It was a whole package of services for the budding autocrat,” said Mr Galeotti. The rewards in terms of Russian influence in Africa have been significant.
Wagner's soldiers in Syria were asked to sign contracts with the Russian military
In short, the Kremlin made Wagner indispensable. Now, they may have crippled it.
They may try to keep the operation running in some form. But the company is already minus some of its other key leaders. Andrei Troshev, the man often named as executive director of Wagner, has reportedly already jumped ship to Redoubt.
Vanda Felbab-Brown, a security and armed conflict analyst for the US think tank Brookings, has said that Wagner under a new leadership will likely still be used as a tool to protect Russian interests.
“Predictions of the end of the Wagner Group’s operations in Africa and the Middle East in the aftermath of its ill-fated rebellion in Russia are premature,” she wrote in a post for the think tank Brookings in July.
“More likely, Wagner’s Middle East and Africa operations will persist: they still serve multiple interests of the Russian state and can be separated from Wagner’s Ukraine and Russia operations.”
Roland Oliphant
Thu, 24 August 2023
Wagner's presence in Syria has been much coveted by the Kremlin
For nearly a decade, it was a piratical linchpin of Russian foreign policy: fronting deniable wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and Africa, and growing rich in the process.
But with the death of its chief and his closest deputies, the Wagner private military company may have come to the end of the road.
But the Kremlin may also find the Wagner brand – with its unique mix of hard power and influence in the Middle East and Africa – hard to replace.
Although Yevgeny Prigozhin did not found the Wagner group (he came on board later), he was – as financier and manager – its corporate mastermind and largely responsible for its commercial success.
It was his connections to the Kremlin and gift for building personal connections and corrupt “understandings” that transformed it from one of many rag-tag gangs fighting Russia’s 2014 invasion of Donbas into a globe-trotting mercenary empire.
“Prigozhin had the rare ability to command the loyalty of fighting men and also run deals with local elites,” said Mark Galeotti, an expert on the Russian security services who is currently writing a book about Prigozhin.
“He would not have risen as far and as fast without Vladimir Putin’s patronage. But he was already doing relatively well. In his own way, he was effective as an entrepreneur especially in the environments where Wagner operates.”
Wagner’s global footprint is as broad as it is violent.
In Libya, it works with Field Marshall Khalifa Haftar, the head of the Libyan National Army, and played a major role in his failed assault on Tripoli in 2019. Wagner mercenaries were, at one point, spotted at the Sharara oil field, the country’s largest.
Wagner mercenaries have also been present in Sudan since 2017, where they control a gold processing plant and are reported to have backed the Rapid Support Forces in the civil war that broke out there in April.
In West Africa, Wagner has a contract with the governments of the Central African Republic and Mali, and has obtained gold and other mineral exploitation rights in both.
Burkina Faso has been forced to deny hiring Wagner, but has hailed Russia as a strategic ally, and the group’s “consultants” were rumoured to be in touch with the military officers who carried out a coup in Niger last month – testament to the brand’s notoriety, whatever their real involvement.
This empire was already in trouble before Prigozhin and Wagner’s military founder, Dmitry Utkin, presumably died on Wednesday.
The secret to Prigozhin’s rapid business success – one he shares with a large number of Russian “tycoons” – was Vladimir Putin’s patronage.
It was a generous catering contract with the ministry of defence that provided the seed capital for Wagner’s overseas expansion.
A tight relationship with Russia’s military intelligence (GRU) and the Kremlin ensured Wagner’s access to training facilities, weapons, and the nod for jobs in Syria, Libya, and the central African Republic.
That patronage vanished the moment Prigozhin, Utkin, and many of their fighters rashly decided to mutiny two months ago.
In the treacherous realm where business and government merge, personal connections are vital and losing Putin’s trust is toxic.
Some Wagner bases in Syria were surrounded last month and their commanders interrogated, presumably to assess how much of a threat they posed to Putin’s rule and whether a further coup was being plotted from Damascus.
In July, Reuters reported that many Wagner fighters were forced to sign new contracts with the Russian defence ministry or were simply kicked out of Syria, citing Syrian regime officials. The crackdown suggests that both Bash al-Assad and Putin feel threatened by restive Wagner fighters inside the country.
On Tuesday, one day before Prigozhin’s jet crashed, Yunnus-bek Yevkurov, Russia’s deputy ministry of defence, arrived in Libya for talks with Gen Haftar.
Wagner has been contracted to train Syrian mercenaries
The ministry said in a press release that it was the “first official visit of a Russian military delegation to Libya,” and that the purpose was “to discuss prospects for cooperation in combating international terrorism and other issues of joint action”.
There could be no clearer signal that the army intends to muscle in on Wagner’s turf.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based military think tank, said that the Russian ministry of defence had recently begun forming new mercenary groups to replace Wagner in Africa.
Wagner personnel and commanders were being headhunted for the new groups. Prigozhin’s trip to Africa was probably an attempt to fend off Russian military plans and drum up new missions for Wagner, one Russian insider source told the ISW.
The institute said: “The source claimed that GRU deputy head (head of the special activities service) Colonel General Andrei Averyanov led the effort to completely block Wagner from operating in Africa and that there were plans to create and train an army corps of more than 20,000 people as Wagner replacements.”
The source added that Prigozhin was deeply opposed to these efforts and “made every effort to prevent them”.
Wagner group mercenaries in Mali - French Army via AP
The ministry of defence’s own mercenary outfit, Redoubt, can easily take over Wagner’s fighting roles overseas.
Its founder, GRU general Vladimir Alexeyev, is reported to have clashed with Prigozhin repeatedly over what could be called mercenary market share.
But he lacks Prigozhin’s own knack for finding a rapport and making a deal with local leaders. And Wagner was not simply offering guns for hire.
Prigozhin’s Concord group could provide autocrats with paid internet trolls to paint them as legitimate leaders standing up to al-Qaeda and Islamic State, and “political consultants” to help rig elections.
The commercial structure would provide the business architecture not only to run mines and oil fields, but to smuggle it out of the country, launder the proceeds, and distribute kickbacks.
“It was a whole package of services for the budding autocrat,” said Mr Galeotti. The rewards in terms of Russian influence in Africa have been significant.
Wagner's soldiers in Syria were asked to sign contracts with the Russian military
In short, the Kremlin made Wagner indispensable. Now, they may have crippled it.
They may try to keep the operation running in some form. But the company is already minus some of its other key leaders. Andrei Troshev, the man often named as executive director of Wagner, has reportedly already jumped ship to Redoubt.
Vanda Felbab-Brown, a security and armed conflict analyst for the US think tank Brookings, has said that Wagner under a new leadership will likely still be used as a tool to protect Russian interests.
“Predictions of the end of the Wagner Group’s operations in Africa and the Middle East in the aftermath of its ill-fated rebellion in Russia are premature,” she wrote in a post for the think tank Brookings in July.
“More likely, Wagner’s Middle East and Africa operations will persist: they still serve multiple interests of the Russian state and can be separated from Wagner’s Ukraine and Russia operations.”
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