Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, has moved to reassure allies in Africa that thousands of Wagner group fighters deployed to the continent will not be withdrawn after the mutiny led by their commander Yevgeny Prigozhin over the weekend.
In an interview with Russia Today, Lavrov pledged that “instructors” and “private military contractors” would remain in Central African Republic (CAR) and Mali, the two countries in sub-Saharan Africa where Wagner has the biggest presence. Both are considered strategic prizes by the Kremlin, which sees them as a springboard to greater influence on the continent and a source of lucrative natural resources.
“At their request, several hundred servicemen are working in the CAR as instructors – this work, of course, will continue … Both the CAR and Mali appealed to the Wagner PMCs with a request to ensure the safety of their leadership,” Lavrov said. “Regarding the reports about who is panicking and about what, I did not see any panic. I did not see any changes in the relations of the relevant African countries with the Russian Federation.”
Wagner troops arrived in CAR in 2018 to bolster the regime of Faustin-Archange Touadéra, which was struggling to fight off a rebel offensive. Since, the mercenaries have become a powerful military, political and economic force in the unstable state.
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Wagner deployed about a thousand personnel to Mali in December 2021 after a military coup and have been deployed against Islamist and other insurgents. The group has been accused of widespread atrocities in both countries. Should the group’s commitment to either regime weaken, both could fall, analysts have said.
Putin is in a tight spot. He has everything to lose geopolitically in Africa and militarily in Ukraine by removing Prigozhin/Wagner from the equation. But I believe the current situation is untenable and will burst at the seams soon, one way or another. I wonder whether the loss of Wagner's influence would be a stabilizing or destabilizing event in Sub-Saharan Africa.
International interest in oil in the Sahel and mineral wealth in Central Africa are the overarching destabilizing factors.
My view is that a vacuum in "enforcers" wouldn't stabilize in the short term.
That said, Wagner's human rights attrocities have been pretty egregious in CAR and it's hard to see it as anything other than a net gain if that were to end. Probably a long tail of groups who were rolling with them/trained by them though.
Alia Brahimi, an expert on mercenaries at the Atlantic Council, said there may now be efforts to “nationalise” the Wagner Group, and that the close existing cooperation In Libya and sub-Saharan Africa between Wagner Group contractors on the ground and the Kremlin would make such a process much easier.
“On the other hand, it will be a test of loyalties for Wagner employees as these are mainly the old guard who weren’t recruited out of prisons and in fact enjoy an esprit de corps – and the commercial stakes in Africa are quite high,” Brahimi said.
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