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People demonstrate in Niger's capital Niamey to show their support for the coup plotters.
What’s next for Russian operations in Africa?
Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in Feb. 2022, Russian warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin, recently killed in a plane crash, was scarcely known outside diehard Russophile circles.
Prigozhin’s celebrity status rose further after this summer’s short-lived mutiny, when, after feuding with Russia’s military leadership, he led thousands of his men from the frontlines in eastern Ukraine toward the heart of Moscow in protest.
Since Prigozhin was killed last week in an explosive event that few believe was an accident, there’s been much speculation about the future of Wagner and its global operations, particularly across Africa, where the group has invested the bulk of its manpower in recent years.
Now that the man at the top is dead, along with his main deputies, what does this mean for the group’s surreptitious activities across the world’s fastest-growing continent?
Wagner: the origin story. After spending nine years in jail for robbery and theft, Prigozhin was released in the dying days of the Soviet Union. He then opened a successful hotdog stand in St. Petersburg, which transformed into a booming restaurant business that endeared him to Vladimir Putin, and ultimately led to him filling the bellies of the Kremlin’s elite.
Prigozhin’s entrepreneurial spirit peaked in 2014 when he started a private mercenary organization known as Wagner, named for Richard Wagner, Adolf Hitler’s favorite composer and ideological kindred spirit. Although Wagner has been described as a private military company, it’s closely intertwined with the Russian state, particularly the military and intelligence corps.
Wagner troops were first identified in a foreign conflict zone in 2014 when Russian troops invaded Crimea. Since then, they’ve operated in Syria, fighting alongside the Russian military to prop up the regime of Bashar Assad, and more recently, have zeroed in on Africa, serving as a security guarantor for authoritarian regimes across the continent.
Wagner in Africa
Under this burgeoning arrangement, Russian mercenaries have been given access to African natural resources in exchange for providing security guarantees – including arms and security services – to help authoritarian African military regimes stay in power.
In the process, Russian state-controlled arms companies have secured fat deals in West Africa while mining companies – both those controlled by the state as well as Putin-linked private enterprises – have also made a mint.
Wagner’s first foray into Africa appears to have been in Sudan in 2017 after the Kremlin signed a series of lucrative deals with longtime Sudanese despot Omar al-Bashir. This included Russia setting up a naval base on the Red Sea as well as gold mining deals that also involved a Wagner subsidiary group.
In exchange, Wagner was charged with training Sudanese troops and helping crack down on protesters calling for the ouster of al-Bashir, who ruled the country with an iron fist for three decades until he was forced out in 2019.
Since then, Wagner fighters have been invited in by various rogue regimes – most notably in the Central African Republic, where they thwarted a coup against President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, as well as in coup-prone Mali.
A similar dynamic has played out in Syria, where Russian mercenaries have gained access to key oil outposts. This helps explain why the newly installed military junta in Niger, one of the world’s top producers of uranium, reportedly wants to bring Wagner on board.
But the resources-for-protection game is only one part of a complex dynamic. Russian mercenaries in Africa also aim to sow discord and anti-Western sentiment in the world’s fastest-growing continent in a bid to dilute Western influence in the region.
Pointing to this week’s coup in the central African state of Gabon, Joana de Deus Pereira, a senior research fellow at RUSI Europe, says that anti-Western disinformation campaigns are now more dangerous than the aforementioned security arrangements with African regimes.
This propaganda pervades many countries, particularly in West Africa, and “prompted the end of the Burkhane operation [an anti-insurgency mission in West Africa led by France] and also led to the current withdrawal of UN troops in Mali, which is one of the biggest retreats of international personnel.”
Pointing to the deepening Russian presence in the region and its propaganda machine (in CAR, for instance, there are posters proclaiming “Russia: hand in hand with your army!) have given rise “to a new trend that’s triggering nationalist movements that are unleashing new coups,” de Deus Pereira says.
The future of Wagner in Africa
Prigozhin was a savvy business person, turning a scrappy private army into one of Russia’s chief foreign policy tools. Having cultivated close ties with African leaders and criminal enterprises – as well as serving as Wagner’s chief financier – Prigozhin’s death will certainly prompt something akin to a company rebranding. But will it impact the group’s regional operations?
De Deus Pereira isn’t convinced. “Wagner is an ecosystem. It's not only a person,” she says, adding that “it's been a big mistake to personalize and associate the group with a single individual.”
A similar sentiment was echoed by Ruslan Trad, a security researcher at the Atlantic Council, who says that “Wagner occupies an important role in this broader system, and the unit's structures will be used in one form or another even after Prigozhin.” Trad says that, “ultimately, Wagner is not a creation of Prigozhin, but of the GRU [Russian intelligence] and veterans.”
Another argument for the likelihood of continuity is that things are going pretty swimmingly for the Russians in Africa, and it is indeed in the Kremlin’s interest to keep the cash rolling in to help fund its war machine in Ukraine. This is exactly what the Kremlin is doing in Sudan, where it’s propping up a Sudanese militia in exchange for increased access to illegal gold mining.
Looking ahead. While the US and France are reducing their respective troop presences in the region, Russia continues to leverage the Kremlin’s clout and Russian oligarchs’ vast business interests to deepen its influence on a continent that includes 54 countries and 1.4 billion people.
“Wagner's presence in Africa has a lot to do with capitalization of grievances” – particularly in former French colonies – “that were already there for some time,” de Deus Pereira says. And she isn’t optimistic about where things are heading: “This is just the beginning. These coups will have a contagion effect.”
The last French convoy from Operation Barkhane, prepares to leave Gossi, Mali.
The UN’s dangerous withdrawal from Mali
The UN this week laid out a timeline for withdrawing peacekeeping troops from the West African state of Mali – a mission that UN chief António Guterres has called “unprecedented” because of the vast logistical and security challenges.
Roughly 13,000 UN peacekeepers and police – and 1,786 civilian staff – will be out of the country by Dec. 31, with their infrastructure handed over to Mali’s military government. The withdrawal of UN forces, who’ve been in the country for a decade, is a huge development in a state long plagued by ethnic strife, poverty, and Islamic insurgents.
Some quick background. The landlocked Sahelian country has been grappling with relentless violence since a military coup in 2012, which gave an opening to an expansive Islamic insurgency that’s since spilled over into neighboring countries.
Years of instability have given rise to multiple military coups since then, most recently in 2021. Last year, that junta expelled French soldiers deployed there to help quash jihadist violence. And most recently in June, Mali’s junta leaders – who have close ties to Russia’s Wagner Group, whose troops they invited to help keep things “under control” – ordered UN peacekeepers to leave.
The withdrawal is now a massive operation for the UN, which will try to evacuate troops and equipment from a hostile environment overrun by rival armed groups and terror cells. (Consider that the UN recently said that the Islamic State doubled the amount of territory it holds in less than a year.) Making matters worse, neighboring Niger, a transit country, recently underwent its own military coup and can’t be considered a safe passage.Central African President Faustin-Archange Touadera speaks while surrounded by Russian officers from Wagner Group.
Hard Numbers: Wagner-backed referendum in Africa, World Triathlon Championships turns stomachs, nuclear fusion test redo, cheese tragedy
95: A referendum abolishing presidential term limits in the civil-war-plagued Central African Republic has comfortably passed, with provisional results showing 95% of people voted in favor, though turnout was a very low 10%. President Faustin-Archange Touadéra has close ties with Russia’s Wagner Group, which reportedly sent in additional mercenaries to keep order ahead of the vote.
57: At least 57 participants in the World Triathlon Championship Series became sick with severe diarrhea and vomiting after swimming off Roker Beach in northern England. The Environment Agency last month found high levels of E coli in the sea, and this comes after a recent report found that water pollution levels in the UK are “unacceptably high.”
2: US government scientists have for the second time successfully carried out a burst of nuclear fusion, a process that generates more energy – clean energy that is – than it requires. This controlled process of mixing atoms to produce energy is a huge milestone on the path toward zero-carbon power. To better understand the process, see our explainer here.
40: A man died in the northern Italian region of Lombardy after being crushed by cheese weighing 40 kg (84lb). The tragedy happened when a shelf holding parmesan-like cheese wheels collapsed in his warehouse, causing a thud that nearby residents said sounded like thunder. The economic fallout – around €7 million ($7.7m) – was steep as well.Pro-junta protesters gather outside the French Embassy in Niamey, Niger.
The geopolitics of Niger's coup
As the crisis in coup-plagued Niger deepens, a French military plane on Tuesday began evacuating European nationals after junta leaders closed the country’s airspace, halting commercial flights. Spain is also preparing to evacuated citizens from Niger.
Compounding the chaos, two countries in the Sahel region – Burkina Faso and Mali – issued a warning that any attempts by outsiders to reinstate Niger’s recently deposed leader Mohamed Bazoum would be viewed as a declaration of war on them all.
Some quick background. This threat came after a group of West African countries, led by Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu, issued a statement on Sunday giving Niger’s junta leaders one week to reinstall Bazoum or risk a harsh response from the bloc, including potential military force.
So far, the group of West African states has imposed an economic blockade on aid-reliant Niger in a bid to force the junta to back down.
Mali and Burkina Faso, both impoverished former French colonies, have experienced military coups since 2020. What’s more, both have ditched former colonial power France in favor of closer ties with … Russia.
Mali, for its part, expelled 5,000 French troops last year, inviting in 1,500 Wagner mercenary fighters instead to, uh, … “keep the peace.” Meanwhile, Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner Group, praised the power grab in Burkina Faso last year. A similar dynamic is playing out in Niger, where protesters in recent days called for French troops to leave and chanted in support of Moscow.
The US and France have a combined 2,500 troops in Niger as part of a longtime effort to crack down on Islamic terrorism in the region. But they also aim to offer a bulwark against Russia’s growing clout across the continent.
Indeed, if things get even more heated in Niger in the days ahead, not only does the situation risk spilling over into a full-blown regional crisis, it also could place the US and France in a pseudo proxy war with the Kremlin in the heart of Africa.
Wagner Group guards are seen around CAR President Faustin-Archange Touadera during the referendum campaign in Bangui.
Wagner to guard CAR referendum
On Sunday, the Central African Republic holds a referendum on its new constitution, which (surprise!) removes presidential term limits. With violence all but assured, the vote will be protected by the army ... and a bunch of foreign mercenaries from a group that's become a household name.
Fresh off its failed mutiny in Russia, the notorious Wagner Group will act as President Faustin-Archange Touaderá's praetorian guard to ensure the plebiscite goes off without a hitch in CAR, a resource-rich yet dirt-poor and chronically unstable nation. Wagner fighters have been deployed in CAR since 2018, and they helped Touaderá get reelected two years ago by scaring off rebels (he showed his gratitude by building a statue honoring "Russian" soldiers in Bangui, the capital).
Still, with its boss Yevgeny Prigozhin now out of favor with Vladimir Putin, Wagner's future in CAR is uncertain. Although the president needs the mercs to keep the rebels in check and Bangui safe, the Kremlin — which has de facto wrested control of Wagner away from Prigozhin — might decide to send its forces to Ukraine or wherever else Moscow needs boots on the ground.
Either way, whatever happens in CAR will be closely monitored in Burkina Faso and Mali, two African countries run by military juntas where Wagner has contracts — and Putin has interests.