Russia will continue to operate in the Central African Republic, with the Wagner group which is currently fighting the rebellion alongside the army, or another contingent, was quick to affirm this Monday, June 26 to Agence France-Presse a high responsible for the presidency of this Central African state. This announcement has the merit of being clear, and its timing comes shortly after the head of Russian diplomacy, Sergei Lavrov, declared that the group of mercenaries who entered a brief rebellion against the Kremlin on Saturday from the Ukrainian front, will ” continue” to operate in Mali and the Central African Republic, Moscow having always claimed that they were “instructors”. Yet after Wagner’s failed rebellion, many questions emerge, what next for the Russian paramilitary group in Africa? Will there be a before and after? Are we moving towards a modification of the Russian presence in Africa? Two countries will be scrutinized in the coming weeks, Mali and the Central African Republic, the first to react officially.
As a reminder “the Central African Republic signed (in 2018, editor’s note) a defense agreement with the Russian Federation and not with Wagner”, declared to AFP Fidèle Gouandjika, minister special adviser to the Central African president Faustin Archange Touadéra, adding: “Russia has sub-contracted with Wagner, if Russia no longer agrees with Wagner then they will send us a new contingent”.
“The affair between Yevgeny Prigojine and Vladimir Putin is none of our business, it is an internal Russian affair,” he continued. In the Central African Republic as in “other theaters of operations in the world”, “they may change leaders, but Wagner’s soldiers will continue to operate on behalf of the Russian Federation”, he said. he adds.
Hundreds of Wagner’s mercenaries had landed in the Central African Republic in 2018, officially according to Moscow to train the army, but above all because Mr. Touadéra’s regime blamed France, the former colonial power, for gradually turning its back on it and to support an arms embargo which prevented, assured Bangui, from arming its soldiers to fight a multitude of armed rebel groups occupying two thirds of the territory since the beginning of a bloody civil war in 2013.
At the end of 2020, President Touadéra, threatened by a rebel offensive on Bangui, called on Moscow for help and hundreds of other Russian mercenaries landed and quickly pushed the armed groups out of most of the territories they controlled.
Since then, the UN, international NGOs and Paris have accused the Russians – just like the rebels and Central African soldiers – of abuses and crimes against civilians. They also accuse Wagner of having become a “predatory group” there of the meager resources – diamonds, gold and wood – of this second least developed country in the world according to the UN, “sold off” by the regime of Mr. Touadéra, against security, to multiple Russian companies linked to Wagner, which directly exploit the deposits.
While continuing to describe Wagner’s paramilitaries as “instructors”, the head of Russian diplomacy also considered that Europe and France “have abandoned the Central African Republic and Mali” which then turned to Moscow. “When these countries came face to face with the terrorist threat, the CAR and Mali asked the Wagner company to provide security for their leaders,” he said. “In addition to these relationships with the Wagner organization, the governments of the Central African Republic and Mali have formal contacts with our government. At their request, several hundred soldiers are working, for example in the CAR, as instructors. »
The Russian paramilitary group is increasingly active in Africa, particularly in Bangui, but also in Madagascar, in the Libyan desert, in Sudan and recently in Mali where the military junta employs these mercenaries and has diplomatically sided with Russia since the deterioration of its relations with France, a former colonial power. It is known that the mercenaries arrived in the country in December 2021, at the call of the Malian transitional authorities, who have only ever recognized “state-to-state cooperation”.
The UN in early May accused the Malian army and “foreign” fighters of executing at least 500 people in March 2022 during an anti-jihadist operation in Moura. The Westerners, including the Americans, assure that these foreign fighters are members of Wagner. Unlike the Central African authorities, the Malian transitional authorities did not comment on the events of this weekend.
In Western chancelleries, the reactions were not immediate, but on Monday the US State Department considered that the abortive rebellion of the Wagner group in Russia showed the risk posed by the organization of mercenaries in African states which associate with them. “The message we’ve delivered to these countries, publicly and privately in the past, is that every time Wagner enters a country, death and destruction ensues,” the spokesperson told reporters. of American diplomacy Matthew Miller. “Wagner is exploiting local people, we see them extracting local wealth, committing human rights abuses,” he added. “What happened over the weekend reinforces the concerns we’ve expressed about the instability the Wagner Group brings with it when it enters conflict,” Miller continued.