Yevgeny Prigozhin, chief and founder of the Wagner mercenary Group, has been . The crash took place exactly two months after Prigozhin led a brief and unsuccessful mutiny against President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Defence Ministry.
Wagner commander Dmitry Utkin has been listed among the passengers too. Russian authorities have claimed all 10 people on board were killed. There has been no official confirmation that Prigozhin was actually on board.
A day earlier, Telegram channels affiliated with Wagner posted the first video of Prigozhin since his mutiny in June. In the video, he appeared to be in an unspecified location in Africa. "The Wagner PMC makes Russia even greater on all continents, and Africa - more free," he said.
Speculation has been rife on the future of Prigozhin after his rebellion. In the midst of the mutiny, Putin denounced it and promised harsh punishment.
For some time, Wagner's leader appeared to have escaped punishment. A swift deal was struck while Wagner troops were moving towards Moscow. . His and relocated to neighbouring Belarus. There, they were instructed to prepare for a new journey: Africa.
But Africa is not a new destination for Wagner Group. In fact, it’s been one of its .
Wagner had a presence across the continent long before it came into the spotlight for its role in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Wagner has been central to Kremlin policy in Africa. While their future is uncertain amid unconfirmed reports of Prigozhin's demise, what have he and Wagner been doing there? Experts talked to SBS Dateline in the days before the reported plane crash.
Having first set foot in the Central African Republic in 2017, Wagner’s private contractors have since been deployed across the continent to Mali, Libya, Sudan and Mozambique. They have protected senior officials and helped national forces fight insurgents in exchange for licences to mine gold and diamonds.
Operating through a network of shell companies, the group also runs online troll farms and phoney NGOs for disinformation campaigns, exploiting existing anti-western and anti-colonial sentiments to push the interests of Russia and its regional clients.
Wagner Group's presence and influence in Africa. Credit: Caroline Huang/ SBS Dateline
“In a sense, [Wagner] represents the extension of how Putin’s regime operates at home to the international stage. It’s a kleptocratic regime that relies on the exploitation of mineral resources. And it pursues a media policy of blaming everything that goes wrong on the West in order to maintain that system.”
Why the Niger coup matters
Wagner’s presence in Africa has come into focus once again following the , where the democratically elected president was deposed by the head of his own presidential guard.
Niger has been an important partner of the United States and France in fighting extremist groups such as and affiliates of the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda in the Sahel region. It's one of the world's poorest countries despite being one of the world's largest uranium producers.
But when supporters of the coup waved Russian flags and denounced France, its former colonial ruler, it echoed similar sentiments seen after coups in other West African countries.
While the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is mulling military intervention in Niger, western partners have expressed concerns the country’s military junta might turn to Wagner Group, for help. If so, the Kremlin could expand its sway in the region.
Thousands of supporters of Niger's coup leaders gathered on August 11 near a French military base on the outskirts of the capital Niamey. They waved Nigerien and Russian flags and shouted "Down with France, down with ECOWAS". Source: AFP / AFP via Getty Images
Personal security, military training: what has the Wagner Group been doing in Africa?
In Africa, Wagner Group has found a niche market with military strongmen and dictators in resource-rich but poor countries mired in political instability and wars.
It provides a range of military and political services on the ground — from personal security to government officials to protecting military bases and mining sites to military training and counterinsurgency operations against rebel and jihadist groups. They are often coupled with weapon supplies and diplomatic backup from the Russian government.
Unlike its troops in Ukraine whom Prigozhin recruited from Russian prisons in exchange for pardons, Wagner’s African personnel are former members of Russia’s elite regiments and special forces.
Their services carry a hefty price tag. The Malian interim government, which came to power after a coup in 2021, reportedly pays Wagner US$10.8 million ($15.6 million) a month.
But the group has also received payment in the form of concessions for natural resources.
In the Central African Republic, Wagner-linked companies have been involved in gold and diamond extraction and logging. In Sudan, where Wagner supports the paramilitary forces in the country’s civil war, it was granted access to gold mines.
Citing corporate records and leaked legal documents, the Financial Times estimated that Prigozhin’s empire earned over US$250 million ($390 million) from oil, gas, diamond and gold extraction in Africa and Syria in the four years before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
According to Human Rights Watch, Wagner mercenaries have also been accused of grave human rights abuses such as mass killings, rape, and torture in the Central African Republic and Mali.
Demonstrators hold banners and a Russian flag in Bangui in March 2023 during a march in support of Russia and China's presence in the Central African Republic. Source: AFP / Barbara Debout via Getty Images
'Wherever they can make money'
In the wake of their withdrawal from Ukraine, Wagner Group had been expected to maintain, if not grow, its clientele in Africa.
“Wagner Group is going to stay wherever they can make money and governments that are willing to pay for their services, in particular, regime security,” Adam Sandor, a researcher at the University of Bayreuth in Germany told SBS Dateline, speaking in the days before the reported plane crash.
“It’s one easy and relatively cheap way to secure your power in the face of potential rivals within the military. We call it coup proofing.”
Wagner had been stepping in with men and weapons where Western governments have not.
“Basically, any African government that is undergoing an insurgency that they really can't handle on their own, and don't have other forms of international military support, are asking for Wagner support,” Sandor said.
Last year, France ended its nine-year counter-terrorism operation in the Sahel region, which its army led with Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, and Mauritania.
Mali, now firmly under Moscow’s sphere of influence, recently ordered the UN to withdraw its 13,000 peacekeepers from the country.
It’s too early to say whether neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger, the most recent countries to go through coups, are on the same path.
Sandor said there is popular urban support for the diversification of security partnerships across the Sahel, in particular, moving away from France, the former colonial power.
But it is hard to gauge the degree of genuine support for Russia given allegations those attending pro-Russia demonstrations have been paid-for actors, and disinformation campaigns that have been spreading pro-Russian and anti-French messages across French-speaking African countries.
One report by an open-source research group All Eyes On Wagner details social media campaigns in Burkina Faso, run by actors allegedly paid by Prigozhin and Wagner Group. Their tactics resembled those used by Prigozhin’s Internet Research Agency during the 2016 US presidential elections.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (centre) shakes hands with Burkina Faso's President Ibrahim Traore (left) during a group photo at the second Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg in July. Only 17 African heads of state attended the forum. That was less than half of the 43 leaders who flew in for the first summit in 2019. Credit: Contributor/Getty Images
Trade, resources and weapons: Inside Russia’s foreign policy in Africa
Russia has been the largest arms supplier in the African continent. But its trade and investment are dwarfed by those of China, the European Union, and the US.
Moscow has been trying to counterbalance Western influence on the African continent to ensure it continues to sell arms and tap into natural resources. Additionally, it has sought diplomatic allies as it faced international isolation in response to its invasion of Ukraine. This year, Russia’s foreign minister toured several African nations ahead of Putin’s summit.
African leaders remain divided over the war in Ukraine, even though it had seriously disrupted food imports and raised the risk of hunger on the continent. At the July summit, Putin to soften the blow of his decision to withdraw from an UN-brokered deal that allowed the exports of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea to global markets. But the amount offered will not meet the demand.
Credit: Caroline Huang/ SBS Dateline
“Military elites are utilising tensions at a geopolitical level between the West and Russia and using Wagner services in a very particular way. So we need to put local politics at the forefront,” Sandor of the University of Bayreuth said.
“They know exactly what they're doing, and they're doing so for very real reasons to be able to consolidate their power.”
La Trobe University's Russia specialist Horvath echoed this opinion. It is a deeper and more fundamental struggle within Africa between democracy and autocracy, he said.
“To see this as merely Russia versus the West, in a sense, replicates one of the central lines of Russian propaganda: the claims of liberating Africa from Western colonialists.”
-With Reuters
This article was originally published on August 20 and has since been updated to reflect developing news.
