(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Putin Ally Mines Gold and Plays Favorites in Sudan [1]
['Declan Walsh', 'More About Declan Walsh']
Date: 2022-06-05
AL-IBEDIYYA, Sudan — In a scorched, gold-rich area 200 miles north of the Sudanese capital, where fortunes spring from desert-hewn rock, a mysterious foreign operator dominates the business.
Locals call it “The Russian Company” — a tightly guarded plant with shining towers, deep in the desert, that processes mounds of dusty ore into bars of semirefined gold.
“The Russians pay the best,” said Ammar al-Amir, a miner and community leader in al-Ibediyya, a hardscrabble mining town 10 miles from the plant. “Otherwise, we don’t know much about them.”
In fact, Sudanese company and government records show, the gold mine is one outpost of the Wagner Group, an opaque network of Russian mercenaries, mining companies and political influence operations — controlled by a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia — that is expanding aggressively across a swath of Africa.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/05/world/africa/wagner-russia-sudan-gold-putin.html
Published and (C) by Common Dreams
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0..
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/commondreams/
