A year after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death, Russia’s influence campaign in Africa continues apace — but it may have new competition
One year after Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin’s death, the Kremlin has “achieved complete control” over the mercenary group’s brand, according to a former U.S. diplomat in Burkina Faso. The paramilitary outfit, which has largely been retooled into the Russian Defense Ministry’s Africa Corps, lives on primarily as Russia’s main means of exercising influence on the continent. While the number of Wagner fighters deployed there is far below what it was at its peak in 2023, Moscow has continued participating in military operations and waging disinformation campaigns in countries like Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso. Meanwhile, in the Central African Republic, Russia’s “flagship model” in Africa might be under threat from a U.S. private security company. Meduza shares new insights from recent reporting on Russia’s activities in Africa.
One of the last known videos of Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin shows him wearing camouflage and sitting in a moving vehicle. It appears to have been filmed a bit less than two months after he led an armed rebellion against the Russian military. “I’m in Africa, so for those who like to speculate about my elimination, […] everything’s fine, as a matter of fact,” he says to the camera. Days later, he died in a fiery plane crash in Russia, where he may have traveled to discuss the future of Wagner Group’s operations in Africa with Kremlin officials.
In the days following Prigozhin’s death, some analysts speculated about whether the mercenary leader’s demise would spell doom for the future of Moscow’s Africa dealings. So far, the opposite appears to have happened. In late 2023, the Russian Defense Ministry created a new entity called the Africa Corps that was intended to replace Wagner Group’s structures. (Wagner Group formally ceased to exist following Prigozhin’s death, but Africa Corps members and projects often still use the Wagner name and logo.) In the spring of 2024, the paramilitary group carried out its largest Africa-focused outreach campaign ever, enlisting fighters to serve in Mali. Last month, the U.K. Defense Ministry reported that Wagner Group “now highly likely maintains around 5,000 total personnel” in Belarus and Africa, compared to the roughly 50,000 troops it had at its peak (which included tens of thousands of fighters in Ukraine).
A ‘bridge’ of disinformation
Shortly after Prigozhin’s death, Moscow created a new tool to help it expand its influence in African countries: a media agency called African Initiative. The organization publishes articles promoting pro-Kremlin narratives and disinformation about Western countries, especially the United States. According to BBC News Russia, experts have linked it to Russian intelligence services.
On its website, African Initiative bills itself as a “Russian news agency about events on the African continent,” while its editor-in-chief has said its goal is to “become the information bridge between Russia and Africa that is so necessary now.” The agency has been most active in Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso, all of which are ruled by military juntas and have close ties to Wagner Group. In recent years, the BBC notes, these countries have distanced themselves from Western allies, pointing to their colonial pasts and failures to defeat jihadist groups, and instead embraced Russia.
African Initiative is reportedly staffed by former employees of Wagner Group and other Prigozhin ventures. Jedrzej Czerep, a researcher from the Polish Institute of International Affairs, told the BBC that the Russian authorities initially wanted to dissolve Prigozhin’s companies in Africa and replace them with something new. “[But] African Initiative, often serving as [Africa Corps’s] media wing, was more accommodating and happy to reuse all assets that were already there,” he said.
According to Czerep, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) is playing a major role in the new project. Among other things, multiple Russia experts have identified its editor-in-chief, Artyom Kureyev, as an FSB agent. According to African Initiative’s website, Kureyev’s deputy is former Wagner Group press secretary Anna Zamarayeva.
African Initiative’s office in Burkina Faso was founded by Viktor Lukovenko, a well-known Russian nationalist who previously worked as a political strategist for Prigozhin and once served a five-year prison sentence for the murder of a Swiss citizen in Moscow. He left his post as head of the office several months ago.
In addition to its news sites in Russian, English, French, and Arabic, African Initiative hosts cultural events in multiple countries and runs several Telegram channels, including some that were originally linked to Prigozhin. One of the channels has nearly 60,000 subscribers.
Among other disinformation, African Initiative has published multiple articles about U.S.-run “biolabs.” One of the stories claims with no evidence that Washington is using Africa as a testing ground for new biological weapons.
In May, the media outlet organized a trip for bloggers from Mali to the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city of Mariupol. The following month, Russian officials and state media outlets held another “press tour” for bloggers and journalists from eight African countries. The participants also visited African Initiative’s headquarters in Moscow.
In their reports about the “press tour,” the African journalists referred to the occupied Ukrainian territories they visited as “conflict zones in Russia,” shared quotes from Moscow-installed occupation officials, and repeated Russian propaganda narratives.
In addition to these trips, African Initiative’s local structures and partners in West Africa are working to promote a positive image of Russia on the ground. As examples of these efforts, the BBC lists a recent soccer match where the Russian national anthem was played, a graffiti festival where Vladimir Putin was drawn along with former Burkina Faso leader Thomas Sankara, and “friendship lessons” in Burkina Faso schools in which students were taught about Russia.
Abandoned in the desert
In late July, Tuareg separatists in Mali, where Wagner Group forces have supported the ruling military junta since 2021, reported a successful ambush against the Russian mercenaries that they claimed killed over 54 fighters.
Reuters has reportedly identified 23 Russian militants who have been missing in action since the operation and two who were taken captive by the Tuareg forces. The group includes multiple longtime Wagner Group members, including some who survived the months-long siege of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut and others who took part in the mercenary group’s operations in Libya and Syria.
The mother of one of the fighters identified by the agency told journalists that her son was recruited from prison in 2022. After serving out his contract in Ukraine, she said, he had difficulty adapting to civilian life and eventually traveled secretly to Africa to re-enlist under his former commander.
Other fighters identified by Reuters had no military experience before they signed contracts with the mercenary group. The wife of one such man said that neither her “hysterics, nor tears, nor persuasion” could convince him not to go to Africa. Several of the mercenaries’ relatives reported that their husbands’ and sons’ bodies were “found abandoned in the desert.”
Jedrzej Czerep told Reuters that Russia’s Africa Corps was “flooded with applications” when it began enlisting fighters — in part because potential recruits view missions in Africa as being safer than ones in Ukraine. But according to former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Tibor Nagy, who also spoke to the outlet, if Russia continues to suffer setbacks on the scale of its July defeat by the Tuareg, it could ultimately choose to withdraw from the country.
A new private security company in town
Before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Wagner Group was perhaps best known for its operations in the Central African Republic (CAR), where its fighters have long been accused of committing human rights abuses on a large scale. For years, the country’s government has relied on Russian forces for security and military training, granting Moscow access to gold and diamond mines in return.
In the immediate wake of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s 2023 mutiny attempt, however, officials in the Central African Republic “panicked” and reached out to a U.S. security firm called Bancroft Global Development, according to a new report from the Associated Press. Bancroft signed a deal with the country three months later, and today it helps the government with “intelligence systems, interagency cooperation, and law enforcement,” the AP reports, though the company says it has “fewer than 30” employees working there.
The U.S. State Department claims it was not involved in the deal, though a former contractor in Africa told the AP that Washington could be concealing its role. The report notes that the U.S. has been “pushing Central African Republic to find an alternative to Wagner for years.”
Bancroft founder Michael Stock told journalists that the company “expected Russia to freak out” at the news of CAR’s new partnership, so to gauge Moscow’s reaction, the U.S. firm sent a Russian-speaking employee to the country’s capital to “do nothing but sit in the hotel garden reading a book all day.” The employee was eventually detained by Russian forces, who are deeply embedded in CAR’s law enforcement, and was not released until the country’s president, Faustin Archange Touadera, personally intervened.
Samuel Ramani, an analyst at the U.K.’s Royal United Service Institute, told the AP that Russia could gain “greater economic and political leverage” in Africa if the U.S. fails to “regain a foothold” there. At the same time, he said, the CAR is Russia’s “flagship model” in the region and losing the country could cause a “domino effect in other countries.”