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lite.cnn.com - on gopher - inofficial
ARTICLE VIEW:
In Africa, Russia is swapping a ruthless paramilitary for a replica it
can control. What’s Putin’s game plan?
By Nimi Princewill, CNN
Updated:
4:24 AM EDT, Mon August 25, 2025
Source: CNN
Wagner, a feared Russian mercenary group that is notorious for staging
a failed mutiny against Moscow and accused of committing serious abuses
against civilians in Africa, is being replaced on the continent by
another Russian paramilitary.
Its successor, experts say, is the Kremlin-controlled Africa Corps.
For years, Wagner, which was funded by the Russian government and by
Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2023, has embodied Moscow’s
military offerings in the Sahel, a semiarid region of western and
north-central Africa that extends from Senegal to Sudan.
With Wagner’s exit from swathes of the region, which is beset by
recurring coups, armed rebellion and extremist insurgency, however, it
seems the Kremlin wants a controlled, but unofficial, army to replace
it.
Putin revealed at a in 2023 that the Kremlin had “concluded
military-technical cooperation agreements with more than 40 African
countries, to which we supply a wide range of weapons and equipment.”
The Kremlin is to some extent filling a vacuum left by Western troops,
who were between 2022 and this year as anti-Western sentiments
reverberate around the region.
At a time when the West has largely turned its attention elsewhere,
from wars in the Middle East and Ukraine to tensions with China, Russia
has become a sought-after security partner both within and outside the
Sahel.
In parts of the region, such as Mali, where Wagner , with dozens
reported killed in a rebel ambush a year ago, its forces have joined
local militaries in combat against insurgents.
What we know about the Africa Corps
Wagner’s successor is not self-run. Unlike the mercenary group, the
paramilitary Africa Corps is placed under the umbrella of the Russian
defense ministry, according to the group’s official Telegram channel.
The corps consists of elite combat commanders from Russia’s army.
“Priority” recruitment was also given to current and former Wagner
fighters, a post on the Africa Corps’ Telegram channel in January
2024.
Operatives of the Africa Corps have since joined the battlefield, with
Mali’s military against militia groups.
Wagner that it was leaving Mali, one of the troubled nations in the
Sahel, saying it had completed a three-and-a-half-year mission fighting
insurgents in the junta-led West African country.
A similar exit by Wagner has been mooted in the Central African
Republic (CAR), the nerve center of the group in Africa.
Wagner has operated in CAR since 2018 and has become the dominant force
in the Central African nation following the final . It is widely
credited in CAR with helping the nation stave off collapse.
Earlier this month, however, military officials in CAR that Russia’s
defense ministry had asked authorities in the nation to substitute in
the Africa Corps for Wagner and to pay for its services in cash.
Remuneration of Wagner for providing military services to CAR, which
include protecting its president, reclaiming territory seized by rebels
and keeping armed groups at bay, “is done in an extremely hidden and
discreet manner” by CAR’s government, Martin Ziguélé, an
opposition lawmaker who served as prime minister from 2001 to 2003, in
January.
As a result, it is not clear how Wagner’s services are paid for.
Still, previous CNN investigations that companies linked to ex-Wagner
leader Yevgeny Prigozhin had won concessions to mine gold and diamonds
in CAR, where nearly 70% of the population lives in extreme poverty
– the fifth highest in the world, according to a World Bank
assessment in 2023.
Prigozhin was northwest of Moscow in August 2023, two months after he
launched a failed rebellion against Russia’s military leadership.
Neither a government spokesperson nor CAR’s defense or communication
ministers responded to CNN’s request for comment on the alleged
planned pivot to the Africa Corps. CNN has also not heard back from
Russian authorities.
The communications minister, Maxime Balalou, told CNN in January that a
bilateral defense agreement “allowed Russia to provide us with
weapons,” as well as “handling and training for our defense and
security forces, (and) assisting our armed forces on the ground.”
The Africa Corps has already arrived in other parts of Africa,
according to the Africa Corps’ Telegram channel, operating in West
African nations and , both governed by juntas.
It is not known whether the corps functions in Central Africa’s
Equatorial Guinea, which hosts an estimated , according to a Reuters
report late last year. Equatorial Guinea has had the same ruler for 46
years.
What does Putin want to do differently?
Russia’s move to replace Wagner in Africa could be a “strategic
rebranding by Moscow,” according to Héni Nsaibia, a senior analyst
at the crisis-monitoring group, the Armed Conflict Location & Event
Data Project (ACLED).
“With the Wagner name severely tarnished after the mutiny and
Prigozhin’s death, Russia is likely consolidating its foreign
military ventures under formal state control by erasing the
‘Wagner’ brand while retaining its core functions under a new name
like the Africa Corps,” Nsaibia said in written responses to CNN.
“In this way,” he added, “Moscow can distance itself from the
mercenary narrative while maintaining a strong presence in the
region.”
Institutionalizing its military engagement in Africa could benefit the
Kremlin in other ways, Nsaibia said.
“The Africa Corps is intended to give Moscow greater control over
operations, and potentially more international legitimacy, and fewer
legal and reputational risks,” Nsaibia explained.
Wagner has from human rights groups over accusations of human rights
abuses.
The European Union sanctioned the Wagner Group and individuals and
entities connected to it in and . Among those sanctioned in 2023 were
“the head of the Wagner Group in Mali, where Wagner mercenaries have
been involved in acts of violence and multiple human rights abuses,
including extrajudicial killings, as well as various high-profile
members of the group in the CAR,” the Council of the EU said.
United Nations experts also called in 2023 for an into alleged crimes
committed by the Wagner Group and the Malian military.
Their statement said, “the lack of transparency and ambiguity over
the legal status of the Wagner Group… create an overall climate of
terror and complete impunity for victims of the Wagner Group’s
abuses.”
Malian authorities pushed back against the allegations, that the
country “was unwavering in prosecuting and punishing proven
perpetrators of human rights violations.”
While many questions remain about Wagner’s operations in Africa,
there are mixed views about the impact its counterterrorism operations
with local armies have had on the continent.
“I don’t see what Wagner has brought to the battle (against
terrorists),” said security consultant Mamadou Adje.
“Since they (Wagner forces) joined the fight, jihadists have spread
across Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger with lots of civilian
casualties,” Adje, a retired Senegalese colonel who previously served
in Mali and Burkina Faso under West African regional bloc ECOWAS, told
CNN.
As for Wagner’s replacement with the Africa Corps in certain
countries, “I don’t see much changing on the battlefield,” Adje
said.
In Nsaibia’s view, Wagner helped Mali’s military “achieve some
tactical and strategic victories, notably the recapture of rebel
strongholds.”
Nonetheless, he said, the group leaves behind “a state on the brink
of collapse.”
Earlier this month, UN delegates that security across the Sahel “is
deteriorating rapidly,” and that terrorist activity in parts of the
region has intensified “in scale, complexity and sophistication,
including through the use of drones, alternative internet
communication, and increasing collusion with transnational organized
crime.”
Ahunna Eziakonwa, a UN Assistant Secretary-General and Africa Director
for the UN’s development program (UNDP), warns that the security
problems in the Sahel “are beyond the capacity of the national
governments,” and so global support is needed.
What matters, though, is that any help from external actors is
“well-meaning,” she told CNN, adding: “We’re not promoting any
kind of support in the military side or security side that undermines
human rights, irrespective of where it comes from.”
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