In Africa, Putin’s footprint is becoming prominent as Russia continues to pull one fragile country after another into its orbit. Using a crew of mercenaries, the most prominent of which is the deadly Wagner Group, Russia has expanded into the heart of Africa with a soft power approach that involves supplying weapons and soldiers to states embroiled in conflict, oftentimes in exchange for gold and access to diamond mines.
In doing this, Russia is taking advantage of an established pattern of African states contracting hired guns to help them deal with conflicts their own army has become unable to stem. For instance, reports show there are several mercenary groups operating in Africa at any point in time. They provide a range of services including training, logistical support, VIP protection for politicians, and protection of important investments like mining sites. These include Israeli mercenaries, contracted by Cameroonian President Paul Biya, to train an elite battalion in their fight with Anglophone separatists; the French agency Secopex which operated in Libya, Somalia, and Central African Republic (C.A.R.); and the British Aegis Defense Services which has operated in at least eighteen African countries. Similarly, in 2016, the Nigerian government was accused of hiring Conella Services Ltd, Pilgrims Africa, and Specialized Tasks, Training, Equipment, and Protection (STTEP)—all with links to South Africa—in its fight against Boko Haram in the Northeast.
So far, Wagner contract soldiers have deployed to Libya, Sudan, Mozambique, Madagascar, the C.A.R., and Mali. Each of the countries that have fallen under the group’s radar share share a few common characteristics: They are impoverished and unstable, assailed by climate change, in the midst of armed conflict and jihadist violence but also are endowed with resources such as oil, gold, diamond, uranium, and manganese.
группа вагнера - Wagner Group patch
The Wagner Group was founded in 2014 by the Kremlin-linked Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, known as “Putin’s Chef” because not only does he own a chain of restaurants and catering businesses that provided services for the Kremlin, but he also made of point of personally serving the Russian leader. The group, which claims to have thousands of fighters made up of a mix of trained former elite soldiers and prisoners from Russian jails, played a prominent role in the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. Beginning in 2013, Russia was using mercenaries in Syria. Wagner Group would eventually have up to 2,500 soldiers deployed to Syria to fight on the side of the government of Bashar al-Assad which has been accused of egregious human rights abuses and war crimes. Current events in Ukraine, however, appear to have challenged Wagner’s position due to an increasingly bitter rivalry between the mercenaries and the Russian military. It is likely that Prigozhin is no longer as favored by Putin as he once was.
Despite this, the group’s influence in Africa continues to grow. In 2017, for example, the organization deployed troops to Sudan to protect then-president Omar al-Bashir’s regime against a local uprising in exchange for exclusive rights to mine gold in the country. Similarly, the group deployed to the C.A.R. to protect the government of President Faustin-Archange Touadéra against rebel groups. As in Sudan, the company was awarded diamond and gold mining licenses throughout the country as payment for its services.
In 2019, the Wagner Group inserted itself into the ongoing civil war in Libya by deploying units in support of warlord Khalifa Hafter. At the same time, the Wagner Group has been involved in counterinsurgency operations in Mozambique against the al-Shabaab insurgency in the country’s northern province of Cabo Delgado.
Stabilizing countries has never been the Wagner Group’s primary goal, a top United Nations official working in the region, who wishes to remain anonymous because they are not authorized to speak to the press, told The Progressive. Instead, “their main interest is commercial. They go into places where there are resources, unstable government structures and weak state institutions and take control of their resources while pretending to help them win wars,” the official added.
In December 2021, the Wagner Group deployed to Mali as it grapples with an Islamist insurgency and climate change. “This is one of the group’s most worrisome deployments yet,” says Waliu Ismaila, a doctoral candidate in African history and British imperial studies at West Virginia University.
For years, Mali has been the battlefield of complex conflicts that have progressively weakened the state, creating conditions for a resurgence of military rule. Ismaila believes that Wagner Group’s ambitious role in Mali, where it has displaced the former colonial power France, could “mark the beginning of the end for Western hegemony in one of the most troubled regions in the world”. In prior years, France, the European Union, and the United States have been the only forces preventing a total breakdown of security in the region. For example, the French-led G5 Sahel joint counter-terrorism force had been militarily engaged in Mali since 2017. But after nine years, the Islamist insurgency has shown no sign of abating, thereby producing anger among the population, which has now combined with historic resentment over France’s colonial past to produce an anti-Western sentiment that Russia is using to its advantage.
In 2022, Mali’s military junta, led by Assimi Goïta, demanded the withdrawal of the 2,400-strong French-led Operation Barkhane from the country. “This is something that may lead to a further deterioration of the security situation in Mali [and] Burkina Faso with a potential spill-over into the Lake Chad region,” Ismaila says.
“Wagner’s activities tie into the Kremlin’s imperialist ambition,” says the United Nations official. According to this official, since 2006, Putin has sought to rebuild Russia’s presence and role in Africa, which was significantly weakened following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. “He looks with nostalgia at the days of the Soviet Union,” the official explains. “All his expansionist activities are aimed at increasing the influence of Russia across the world.”
At the rate Russia is going, it is only a matter of time before it acquires its first military base on the continent. Russia is already in talks with Sudan to establish a naval base on the coast of the Red Sea. The agreement, which is planned to last for twenty-five years, will allow Russia to set up a naval base as well as troops and military infrastructure in the strategic Port Sudan on the Red Sea in exchange for Russia’s provision of weapons and military equipment to Sudan.
Russia’s growing influence in Africa can partly be attributed to a stroke of luck, in that, unlike its European neighbors, Russia has no colonial legacy in Africa. Instead, the Soviet Union was a partner to the continent’s decolonization struggles in the 1960s and afterwards, became an economic and military partner. As such, Russia’s presence in the region does not raise as much suspicion of a neocolonial takeover.
Above all, “Putin’s autocratic leadership appeals to African leaders, many of whom are dictators,” says the United Nations official.
But increasingly, amid Russia’s rising popularity in Africa, voices are being raised against the Wagner Group’s human right abuses, political interference, and resource theft. In January, the United States labeled the group a "significant transnational criminal organization” and levied new sanctions against individuals and companies linked to it.
But for many Africans, there is no trust for either Russia or the West. According to Abdoulaye Diallo, chair of the Ouagadougou-based National Press Center Norbert Zongo in Burkina Faso, none of the hand-wringing about the Wagner Group and Russia’s role on the continent is out of genuine concern for Africa and its people. “Only Westerners talk about Wagner,” Diallo says, “but given their rivalry with Russia, I distrust all the information Westerners give about Wagner. It’s just a war between the Great Powers for control of Africa . . . . The best ally for Africa is Africa itself.”