Wagner group surges in Africa as US influence fades The Washington Post cites Pentagon leaks

The Wagner group is moving aggressively to establish a “confederation” of anti-Western states in Africa as the Russian mercenaries foment instability while using their paramilitary and disinformation capabilities to bolster Moscow’s allies, according to leaked secret US intelligence documents.

The rapid expansion of Russia’s influence in Africa has been a source of growing alarm to U.S. intelligence and military officials, prompting a push over the past year to find ways to hit Wagner’s network of bases and business fronts with strikes, sanctions and cyber operations, The Washington Post reports citing the documents.

At a time when Wagner leader Yevgeniy Prigozhin has been preoccupied with Kremlin infighting over the paramilitary group’s deepening involvement in the war in Ukraine, U.S. officials depict Wagner’s expanding global footprint as a potential vulnerability.

One document in the trove lists nearly a dozen “kinetic” and other options that could be pursued as part of “coordinated U.S. and allied disruption efforts.” The files propose providing targeting information to help Ukraine forces kill Wagner commanders, and cite other allies’ willingness to take similar lethal measures against Wagner nodes in Africa.

And yet, there is little in the trove to suggest that the CIA, Pentagon or other agencies have caused more than minor setbacks for Wagner over a six-year stretch during which the mercenary group, controlled by Putin ally Prigozhin, gained strategic footholds in at least eight African countries, among 13 nations where Prigozhin has operated in some capacity, according to one document.

The only direct military strike mentioned in the files refers to “a successful unattributed attack in Libya” that “destroyed a Wagner logistics aircraft.” The document provides no further detail about the operation or why that single plane — part of a far larger Wagner fleet — was targeted.

The most significant American attack against Wagner was near Deir al-Zour, Syria, in February 2018, when U.S. airstrikes killed several hundred Wagner fighters who were attacking several dozen Delta Force soldiers, Rangers and Kurdish forces next to a gas plant.

Overall, the trove portrays Wagner as a relatively unconstrained force in Africa, expanding its presence and ambitions on that continent even as the war in Ukraine has become a grinding, if not all-consuming, problem for the Kremlin.

As a result, “Prigozhin likely will further entrench his network in multiple countries,” one of the intelligence documents concludes, “undermining each country’s ability to sever ties with his services and exposing neighboring states to his destabilizing activities.”

Wagner’s rise heralds a new surge of great power competition in Africa and with it a resurgence of authoritarianism, said Anas El Gomati, director of the Tripoli-based Sadeq Institute think tank.

Wagner, he said, “are a solution to the kind of problems that African dictators find themselves in: Democratic push back? No problem. We’ll help you with that, whether it’s tampering with ballots, or whether it’s literally fighting brutal kind of insurgencies like they have in [the Central African Republic] and in southern Libya.”

“If you’re suffering trying to get your resources and minerals out of your country, ‘not only can we bring [those] services to you, but we’ll put those dollars in your bank and no one will be any the wiser’ — because they operate these massive networks of shell companies,” he said, referring to Wagner.

Prigozhin entities have not only accelerated operations in Africa over the past year, according to the assessments, but appear to be operating with expanded ambition and authority — “shifting his approach from taking advantage of security vacuums to intentionally facilitating instability,” according to one of the documents.

Prigozhin claimed in comments on Telegram that his operations in Africa are “honest and fair,” designed only to “defend the African peoples, including those oppressed by bandits, terrorists, and unreliable neighbors.”

Wagner is extracting resources in the Central African Repubic (CAR), Libya and Sudan according to one of the leaked documents. As well as a source of gold, uranium and other resources, the continent is a market for Russian weapons, nuclear power technology and security contracts. Russia leveraged its influence with Sudanese military leaders to agree on the completion of a naval base in Port Sudan by the end of 2023, according to the documents.

In January, the State Department designated Wagner as a transnational criminal organization, with a pattern of “serious criminal behavior [that] includes violent harassment of journalists, aid workers, and members of minority groups and harassment, obstruction, and intimidation of U.N. peacekeepers in the Central African Republic, as well as rape and killings in Mali.”

Prigozhin — an ex-convict who rose to become an oligarch and close ally of Putin — offers security, military assistance, political advice, opinion polling, and political manipulation techniques to African leaders facing rebellions or instability, in return for resource contracts in regions that are too unstable to attract major Western companies.

Russia has taken advantage of former Soviet ties with African leaders, according to analysts, but it has also exploited the United States’ dwindling engagement in Africa, notably during the Trump presidency, as well as an anti-French backlash over its counterterrorism operation in the Sahel region, focused on Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger named Operation Barkhane.

Meanwhile, some analysts say, U.S. investment in Africa pales in comparison to China’s vast program of infrastructure and loans, while Russia is seen as offering more choices to African leaders who do not want to pick sides between Washington, Beijing and Moscow.