Wagner’s future in Africa in question after Russian mutiny

For years Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group has been the main vehicle of Russia’s power projection in Africa, engaging in military, mining and propaganda activities across the continent from Libya and Sudan to Mali and Mozambique.

If Moscow is able to follow through on its threat to disband Wagner after Prigozhin’s aborted mutiny in Russia, the question now is what will happen to the mercenary group’s extensive African operations.

For one leader, Central African Republic President Faustin-Archange Touadéra — who owes his survival to Wagner mercenaries after they put down an attempted rebellion in 2020 — that is down to Moscow. Fidèle Gouandjika, a top adviser to Touadéra, said Wagner’s “instructors” came with Russia’s blessing.

“If Moscow decides to withdraw them and send us the Beethovens or the Mozarts rather than Wagners, we will have them,” he said.

Wagner has played a pivotal role in some of the continent’s recent conflicts and has drawn its own funding from a mix of sources, but remains heavily dependent on Russian state backing, not least for logistical support.

“The monster will evolve, but it will not die,” said Nathalia Dukhan, senior author of a report, Architects of Terror, published on Tuesday by The Sentry, an investigative group, on Wagner’s activities in CAR.

The Kremlin has said Wagner’s activities in Africa will continue, but while it is seeking to take control of the mercenary group in Russia and Ukraine — including pushing Wagner to hand over its weapons — it has not indicated how it wishes to deal with the group’s African operations.

In at least five years of African activity, Wagner has provided Moscow with quick and cheap influence, experts said. It has also given the Kremlin plausible deniability for Wagner’s actions, which have included election interference and disinformation campaigns in several countries as well as alleged massacres in CAR and Mali.

Despite Vladimir Putin’s claim on Tuesday that the Russian state “completely financed” Wagner, in Africa — where it has thousands of personnel — the mercenary company has developed funding sources beyond Moscow.

In CAR and other countries Wagner has established a ruthless, self-financing “business model”, involving military violence and control of gold and diamond mines, Dukhan said. She said that model was too effective to easily dismantle: “A virus survives. It will adapt to the new environment.”

In Libya, Wagner’s deployment was previously financed by the United Arab Emirates, according to the Pentagon, and also by Khalifa Haftar, the warlord who contracted the mercenaries to fight alongside his forces in 2019. Western officials said the UAE funding dried up in 2021.

One western official said Wagner could continue its operations on the ground while looking for other means to arm itself, but that Russian logistical backing would be hard to replace. Wagner has used Russian military bases and aircraft to transport everything from arms to personnel.

Charles Bouessel, a senior consultant with Crisis Group on CAR, said he could not see how Wagner could continue its African operations, which employ thousands of people, without Moscow’s approval.

“Wagner relies heavily on Russian ministry of defence logistics for the delivery of military equipment,” he said. “Wagner will have trouble operating in the long term without this support.”

Samuel Ramani, a fellow at think-tank Rusi and author of the book Russia in Africa, said one possibility was that Prigozhin could use his African operations as a bolt-hole if he is unable to stay in Belarus as stipulated in his truce with Putin. “He could pop up in Sudan or pop up in CAR as a medium-term destination.”

“Prigozhin wanted to become the face and driver of Russia’s policy in Africa,” Ramani said. But Wagner’s Africa operations could survive even if Prigozhin were removed or killed, he added, since Wagner had ties to the GRU intelligence services and was run by military veterans.

Wagner’s operations could also conceivably be taken over by other private military companies, such as the one run by Gazprom, Russia’s energy giant, Ramani added.

Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, on Monday promised continuity. “In addition to relations with this PMC, the governments of CAR and Mali have official contacts with our leadership,” Lavrov said, using the acronym for “private military company” to refer to Wagner. “At their request, several hundred soldiers are working in CAR as instructors. This work will continue.”

Diplomats in CAR said there had been no obvious change on the ground since Prigozhin’s rebellion. Wagner’s two most visible figures — Dmitri Syty, whose official role is director of a Russian cultural centre, and Vitali Perfilev, head of military actions — were still in Bangui, the capital, they said.

A source close to Touadéra said events in Russia had had no impact. “Move along; there’s nothing to see here,” he said.

In Mali, where the military government’s deployment of Wagner since 2021 has received support from the heavily censored media, the online newspaper Mali Actu wrote that the drama surrounding Prigozhin was causing anxiety.

“Malians fear that recent events in Russia will affect the operations of the Wagner Group on their soil and generate new uncertainties regarding national security,” it said.

Mali is in the process of expelling the Minusma UN peacekeeping force, increasing Bamako’s reliance on Wagner to fight a jihadist insurgency that has raged since 2012. “If [Wagner] pulled out then the Malians would have a problem,” said a western diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In Libya, where Wagner has been fighting on the side of rebel leader Haftar since 2019, Prigozhin’s forces have had a tense relationship with the Russian military. While they helped provide Russia with a foothold in a country with Africa’s largest proven oil reserves, Russian officials had expressed frustration with Prigozhin — particularly his political operations, which they said had complicated Moscow’s ties with Libyan authorities in Tripoli. One of Prigozhin’s main political lieutenants was arrested in the country in 2019.

Up to 2,000 Wagner mercenaries were beaten back in 2020 by a Turkish intervention in Libya, but Wagner still emerged with control of two of Libya’s main air bases. These also acted as a transport hub for its deployment in Mali.

Wagner’s ability to adapt and survive has been tested before. When Russia invaded Ukraine last February, analysts said, some fighters were pulled out of Africa to aid the invasion force. Yet Sentry’s Dukhan said its activities in CAR may have intensified.

Wagner has trained local militias to fight on its behalf, and has rebuilt the numbers of its Russian fighting force, she said. Last August, CAR informed the UN that it anticipated receiving a further 3,000 Russian “instructors”, potentially adding to the roughly 1,500 Wagner operatives who diplomats and defence officials estimate are now in the country.

Two diplomatic sources said that in recent weeks, Russian flights to CAR, including large Antonov cargo planes, had been more frequent, suggesting an increase in arms shipments.

Some weaponry might be headed across the border into Sudan, where Wagner has forged links with paramilitary leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, whose forces are fighting the Sudanese army, said diplomats and a UN official. Dagalo, better known as Hemeti, has admitted that his troops were trained by Wagner but denies continuing ties.

“They are not reducing their operation in CAR,” said Dukhan. “They are increasing it and they are planning to grow more.”

Cartography by Steven Bernard