A statue depicting Russian soldiers protecting civilians in Bangui, Central African Republic. — ©2024 The New York Times Company
FOR years, Russia covertly propped up authoritarian leaders, exploited natural resources and fought extremists in a number of African countries.
It worked through the Wagner Group, a shadowy web of political advisers, entrepreneurs and mercenaries. But it never revealed how closely it was controlling Wagner’s activities around the world, maintaining a distance as numerous accusations of human rights abuses were levelled against the group’s operatives on the ground.
Wagner was led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a ruthless tycoon who was once a close ally of President Vladimir Putin of Russia. But after Prigozhin led a short-lived mutiny against Putin in June last year, Prigozhin was killed in a plane crash.
Since then, Russia has been carving up Wagner’s assets and redistributing them to branches of the Kremlin, according to interviews with a dozen diplomats and military and intelligence officials from Western countries, Russia and Ukraine.
The Russian defence ministry has taken control of Wagner’s mercenary arm in Africa and placed it under a bigger umbrella group, Africa Corps. Russia’s defence and foreign ministries did not respond to a request for comment.
Here is what to know about Africa Corps.
Where is Africa Corps deployed?
A few hundred instructors from Africa Corps first arrived in Burkina Faso, in West Africa, late last year, according to Western officials and the group’s channel on the Telegram messaging app, which diplomats, analysts and Russian news outlets have considered a credible source on the group.
Since April, about 100 instructors from the organisation have been deployed in Niger to train its military, a task that until recently had been led by the United States and European countries. A week later, the United States announced that it would withdraw about 1,000 military personnel from Niger.
Because Africa Corps is directly affiliated with Russia’s government, it “looks more legitimate to African governments,” said Sergey Eledinov, a security analyst and former representative of a Russian private military company working in Africa.
Russia has also provided weapons to the two countries, where military juntas are struggling to contain insurgents in the Sahel, a semi-arid region that extends through both nations.
Mercenaries from Africa Corps have also been deployed in Libya, which Russia has long used as a logistical hub for military deployments in sub-Saharan Africa.
Wagner’s mercenary activities there have been subsumed into Africa Corps, according to a European military official and a US State Department official.
Is Africa Corps replacing Wagner?
About half of Africa Corps’ recruits are Wagner veterans, it said on its Telegram channel. And the jobs are similar: Africa Corps needs bodyguards, ground troops, drone operators and “electronic warfare specialists”, according to advertisements from the group.
But Africa Corps acts as an umbrella for Russia’s paramilitary activities on the continent – not just those of Wagner, but also of other private military companies. The mercenaries deployed in Burkina Faso are from a new structure called Bear, for instance.
“There’s some sort of competition among these companies,” said Oleksandr Danylyuk, a former special adviser to the head of Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service.
Russia’s military intelligence agency, known as the GRU, oversees Africa Corps’ operations, according to the State Department.
“The goal is the same: establish control in several African countries,” said Danylyuk, who co-wrote a recent report on Russia’s military activities beyond Ukraine.
Wagner hasn’t disappeared altogether: some of its operatives remain in the Central African Republic and Mali. Their close ties with local military, political and economic circles have made them hard to dislodge or too useful for Russia to get rid of, Western diplomats and analysts say.
A new propaganda outlet, African Initiative, has also been created to promote the growing ties between Russia and African countries. It is supported by Russia’s intelligence services, according to the State Department.
What does Russia want in Africa?
In short, Russia wants geopolitical clout and access to natural resources. But African leaders have a lot of suitors: not just Russia, China, the United States and European countries, but also Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, among others.
A Russian gold-processing plant in the desert outside al-Ibediyya, 321km north of Khartoum, Sudan. — ©2024 The New York Times Company
Mercenaries and disinformation specialists from Wagner have played a key role in weakening Western interests on the continent and replacing European and US troops, as well as UN peacekeepers, in several countries.
Those developments have alarmed US officials.
“The Russian Federation is really trying to take over Central Africa, as well as the Sahel,” Gen Michael Langley, head of the US military’s Africa Command, told the US Congress in March.
Russia has argued that it is championing a new multi-polar world order that will help African countries bolster their sovereignty. But Russia is also seeking to grow its number of allies: many African countries abstained from condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or even supported it, during votes at the UN.
Russia has signed military cooperation agreements with 43 African countries since 2015, according to the European Parliament. It was also the largest supplier of weapons to Africa between 2018 and 2022, accounting for 40% of the continent’s weapons imports.
Wagner operatives have exploited gold mines in the Central African Republic and Sudan. Russian mining companies export diamonds from Angola and Zimbabwe, and bauxite from Guinea, among others.
What do West Africans say?
The West African leaders who have sought closer partnerships with Russia want personal protection, soldiers and weapons to fight rebels and insurgents affiliated with al-Qaeda and the IS group.
Some civil society activists, civilians and local politicians in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso interviewed over the past year say that Russia is delivering.
“This partnership with Russia is going to help us end this war on terror,” said Boureima Ouedraogo, a pro-Russian civil society activist from Burkina Faso. “Our soldiers have no fear anymore.”
But just as African militaries have been unable to defeat the insurgents despite the American and European support, they have also had limited successes with their Russian partners, security experts say.
And abuses against civilians have soared in the years since these militaries have called in Russian instructors, with Wagner mercenaries accused of mass killings and torture in Mali and rape and other crimes in the Central African Republic.
Soumaila Lah, a Mali-based security analyst, said that those living in large cities favoured Russia’s presence as necessary.
“But in the remote areas where mercenaries operate, local populations are noticing the cases of torture, the arbitrary arrests and the assassinations,” Lah added.
“In those places, they don’t want them anymore.” — ©2024 The New York Times Company
