Putin sells Wagner ‘regime survival packages’ to win influence in Africa, think tank says

Report claims Russia exploits frustrations with West to build a network of friendly states and win access to gold and minerals

Russia is trying to win influence among authoritarian African leaders by offering them a “regime survival package” provided by its rebranded Wagner mercenary group, a report says.
Wagner was brought under direct state control after its founder Yevgeny Prigozhin, who launched a failed coup against Vladimir Putin, was killed when his plane exploded.
Now renamed the Expeditionary Corps, it remains at the forefront of Putin’s attempts to edge out the West from large parts of Africa.
The Kremlin is using the corps to build an “Entente Roscolonial” of states “that actively seek to assist Russia, while also becoming increasingly subordinate to Russian influence”, the report from the Royal United Services Institute think tank says.
Russian officials are successfully preying on African disillusionment with the West, arguing it does not care about Africa and security alliances with it have only deprived the continent’s leaders of sovereignty.
Turning to the Kremlin for security support against domestic rebels is more effective, they argue, and without Western pressures over human rights.
Russian commanders take control of resources like gold mines or mineral deposits to pay for the operations and keep costs down for the African governments, the report says.
Jack Watling, one of the authors, said: “The package that they are offering these countries is pretty straightforward.
“It is essentially that the West has been coming to you and telling you how you should behave. And they haven’t solved the problems because they’ve ultimately been interested in killing jihadists that they don’t like, rather than killing people who are rebels that you don’t like.
“We will fix that problem: rather than giving you troops that you don’t control, we will give you soldiers that are part of your military that you control and we will enable the operations you want to do.”
The strategy has already been used in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, leading the countries to downgrade ties with former Western allies, particularly France.
Mr Watling went on: “They also use a standard methodology that the Russian special services employ which is that essentially capital costs come from the state, but operational costs can be self-generating.
“This is quite attractive for the countries that they’re targeting. Because it means that these countries do not need to take out loans or other things in order to pay for the operations.”
In Mali, for example, where some 2,000 Wagner troops are in place, the government is restructuring the mining code to allow concessions to be taken from companies and granted to the Russians, he said.
As the Ukraine war seems set to settle into stalemate for the foreseeable future, the Kremlin is instead looking further afield to press any advantage, Mr Watling said.
“This Africa strategy highlights how the Russians are trying to compete on a much wider scale and across a much broader theatre than we are,” he added.
“We are very focused on Ukraine and localised conflict. The Russians see our prioritisation of other lines of effort as an opportunity to convince other countries that we don’t actually care about them.”
After Mr Prigozhin’s failed rebellion in June last year, the Wagner group was brought under the direct control of Russian military intelligence, the GRU.
The Expeditionary Corps is now led by Gen Andrey Averyanov. He previously headed the GRU’s Unit 29155, which specialises in destabilising foreign governments.