A powerful actor in Africa – DW – 27/10/2024

The Russian mercenary Wagner Group has long grown into a highly influential network that also engages in economic activities, especially in Africa. At the same time, it is known that the country always gives priority to Russian – read: the Kremlin – interests.

When the group’s boss, Russian multimillionaire Yevgeny Prigozhin, sought an open confrontation with Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin in June 2023, he died shortly afterwards in a mysterious plane crash.

Since then, the Wagner group has penetrated even deeper into Russian state structures.

Russia’s unofficial surrogate agent

“For Russia, the Wagner Group is absolutely essential because it complements the official diplomatic channels,” Hager Ali, a researcher at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies in Hamburg, told DW.

She added that apart from equipping armed forces and pursuing diplomatic initiatives such as during the recent BRICS summit, there were other areas of activity that the Russian government could not necessarily pursue through official channels.

“There are very different international rules for a formal army than for a private military contractor,” she explained.

After Prigozhin’s death, several units were incorporated into Russia’s so-called Afrika Korps and placed under the control of the Russian Ministry of Defense.

The name “Africa Corps” refers to a German expeditionary force of the same name under Nazi Germany, just as the Wagner Group shares a name with Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s favorite composer, Richard Wagner.

“The Russian state wanted control over mercenaries, but did not want to touch existing personnel structures on the ground,” Ulf Laessing, head of the Sahel program at German policy and civic education think tank the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, told DW.

“That is why the Afrika Korps is now, so to speak, a holding company that Wagner has taken over,” he added.

But the Wagner group is not the only instrument that the Russian state uses to influence politics on the African continent. Russia is also involved in efforts to spread anti-Western propaganda in African societies through social and conventional media, and is home to a number of cultural institutions, such as the Russian House in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic (CAR).

Dmitri Sytyi, the director of the Russian House, told DW that the house had hundreds of visitors who learned Russian and attended theater and music performances.

“Right now I am the ambassador of Russia, a kind of informal ambassador of Russian policy in this country,” Sytyi said in an interview.

The EU and the US consider him a senior Wagner official and have placed his name on their international sanctions lists. He is accused of serious human rights violations in CAR. Human Rights Watch speaks of targeted killings and torture in 2022, but also emphasizes the continued impunity for perpetrators from the ranks of the Wagner group.

The 35-year-old has said he is being made a scapegoat.

What is the Wagner Group doing in Africa?

Few countries have such close ties to the Wagner Group as the Central African Republic. In 2018, the country signed an official security pact with Russia and a military airport is currently being developed into a Russian hub.

Wagner mercenaries protect President Faustin-Archange Touadera and support government forces in their efforts to maintain the upper hand in the ongoing civil war. According to media reports, there are about 1,500 to 2,000 fighters on the ground.

In exchange for their security services, companies from the wider Wagner network operate, among other things, a gold mine in the CAR and cut valuable tropical timber. Others brew beer, sell vodka in Bangui or trade sugar.

The Wagner Group is also an active player in the conflict in Libya. And Libya and CAR are hubs for the Wagner Group’s activities in Sudan.

Even before the Sudanese civil war broke out in April 2023, the group was in close contact with the Sudanese Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which trained troops and guarded gold mines.

However, the Kremlin also views the other warring party, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), as an important trading partner – and for establishing a naval base in the Red Sea.

Thanks to the new structuring of the Wagner Group under the Afrika Korps, the Kremlin could now pursue a clearer strategy, Ali told DW, adding that “on the one hand, Russia has access to resources through the Wagner Group, on the other hand it can now also use official diplomatic channels to maintain or even deepen its footprint in Sudan.”

In this way, Russia, which depends on foreign currency for its war in Ukraine, could benefit twice by not only selling new weapons systems, but also involving the Wagner Group in the knowledge transfer, the expert explained.

Regime survival for sale

Another focus of the Wagner Group’s activities is in the Sahel region: anti-Western coups are in power in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, all of which depend on Russian aid.

“Mali’s original idea was to bring in Wagner and replace the West to fight and get weapons,” Laessing told DW. However, this target has now shifted, he added.

For example, the leader of the coup in Burkina Faso, Captain Ibrahim Traore, surrounds himself with Russian bodyguards. There is also evidence that the Wagner group is offering ‘regime survival packages’ in Mali and Niger.

“Although the Afrika Korps also exists in Niger, there are no signs of them fighting. I am convinced that they are there to protect the regime,” Laessing said, adding that this was especially the case now that Russia had announced that the group would be threatened. installing air defense weapons “that you don’t need to fight jihadists.”

Researcher Ali agrees: “This (survival package) can include expertise and experience as well as actual support in defending against possible uprisings of the civilian population or in collecting natural resources,” she told DW.

In the future, it is possible that more African heads of state will accept such ‘survival packages’ from the Wagner Group.

This article was originally published in German.