Putin’s March to the Red Sea Russian imperialism continues its push on the African front. by MARTIN AROSTEGUI January 19, 2024, 1:25 AM
Vladimir Putin’s ambitions to revive the Soviet empire go beyond his war in Ukraine, involving lower-intensity geostrategic moves in various parts of the world producing disturbing results in Africa, where a growing chain of anti-Western military dictatorships controlled by the Kremlin could soon reach the Red Sea.
Russia has signed security agreements with more than 20 African countries, 13 of which were signed in the past five years, according to the Morocco-based think tank Policy Center for the New South. Moscow is Africa’s single largest arms supplier, accounting for 40 percent of African arms purchases between 2018–2022, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, far outstripping the 16 percent U.S. share and dwarfing that of France, the former colonial power whose 8 percent participation may shrink even further.
Newly installed military dictatorships in Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso, as well as the Central African Republic (CAR), have expelled the French foreign legionnaires that traditionally policed the region to replace them with the Russian “Spetsnaz” of the Wagner private military company and other PMCs created by Moscow. “Russian mercenaries have established complex networks of political, economic and military influence” in Sahel and North Africa, reports an extensive policy research paper by the Warsaw-based Casimir Pulaski Foundation.
Russia has been consolidating its operations in Africa since the assassination of Wagner CEO Yevgeny Prigozhin, who spearheaded Moscow’s penetration of the continent by backing coups and rebellions along a strip of chronically unstable countries stretching from the western Sahara to the Red Sea.
Prigozhin provided a screen of “plausible deniability” for the Kremlin by personally negotiating deals for major mineral and energy concessions in exchange for arms, military training, and advisers to back regimes shunned by Western powers for their savagely repressive practices. “The West has been losing the race for geopolitical influence in Africa to … Russia … because of, among other things, its insistence on implementing … its own ideological models regarding human rights, political rules, etc., which are alien to local culture and tradition,” says the Pulaski think tank.
Since assassinating Prigozhin last August (see The American Spectator’s coverage), Russia’s intelligence services have rushed to assert control over Wagner’s widespread assets. High-level delegations led by the military intelligence (GRU) chief, Gen. Andrei Averyanov, and Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov have repeatedly traveled to the capitals of the Sahel, the Central African Republic (CAR), and Libya, where Wagner has established extensive military bases containing Pantsir mobile air defense systems, Mi-8 heavy lift and Mi-35 combat helicopters, and Sukhoi and MiG fighter aircraft. While providing critical support for Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LAN) in its struggle with the Turkish-supported central government in Tripoli, they also operate “autonomously,” according to the Pulaski Foundation, providing “forward bases” for Moscow to pursue ventures throughout Africa.
Talks between Russian defense officials, Haftar, and the camouflage-clad, sunglass-sporting army officers now ruling the Sahel countries have involved substituting their contracts with Wagner for more direct agreements with the Russian defense ministry, which is offering to further coordinate arms deliveries and upgrade military training for their armies. Russia’s defense ministry is incorporating the thousands of Wagner mercenaries spread throughout the continent into a new PMC called “Africa Corps,” according to recruitment ads posted by Russian military bloggers on Telegram.
Such plans were underway prior to Prigozhin’s death. During a July meeting in St. Petersburg between Putin and 17 African heads of state, the president of Central African Republic, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, expressed concern about the future of his Wagner bodyguards following Prigozhin’s June 24 rebellion. Putin introduced him to GRU general Andrei Averyanov, as the new authority “responsible” for the group in Africa.
The CAR president had considered switching his security to the Washington-based firm Bancroft Global Development, which says that it has communicated with him. But he was visited at his palace in Bangui by Averyanov in September. Subsequently, a Russian ex-intelligence operative who closely advised Touadéra at the time of his crackdown on opponents in 2021, and has recently started his own PCM, came to see him last month.
Despite being the poorest country in Africa, CAR has valuable gold mines which were given as concessions to Wagner to mitigate Russia’s international sanctions and finance the Kremlin’s expanding operations in Africa. The mines straddle the border with Sudan, where Wagner teams are supporting Sudanese rebel gendarmes of the Rapid Support Forces led by general Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo who took over government buildings in the capital, Khartoum, last year as the Russians pressured president Abdel Fattah al-Burhan to give them a Red Sea naval base in Port Sudan.
Wagner recruited Dagalo when he was already indicted by the International Criminal Court for “crimes against humanity” over the alleged genocide of rival tribes in his home region of Darfur. Hundreds of Russian mercenaries are similarly assisting Col. Assimi Goita in Mali who took power in a 2021 coup and has been accused of conducting systematic slaughters in villages suspected of harboring Islamic insurgents. Russian flags and posters lauding Putin instantly blossomed at rallies supporting Niger’s military junta when general Abdourahamane Tchiani overthrew president Mohamed Bazoum last July, imprisoning him and his family in conditions that UN observers have described as “inhumane.”
Responses to Russian encroachments have been weak. The Economic Community of West African States led by oil rich Nigeria threatened to intervene militarily to reestablish democratic rule in Niger following the July coup. But ECOWAS was faced down by Sahel’s three military juntas which declared an alliance against any invasion at a summit in Mali. France withdrew its 1,500 troops from Niger and shut down its besieged embassy last month. (READ MORE from Martin Arostegui: Russia and Iran’s Deadly Terrorist Diplomacy)
CIA director Nicolas Burns made a surprise visit to Libya a year ago to try to convince Marshal Haftar to shut down Wagner’s bases. The U.S. spy chief may have acted on intelligence of rising tensions between Wagner and LAN commanders increasingly irritated by the impunity of the Russian mercenaries, according to the Pulaski Foundation. But the U.S. has not agreed to give Haftar sophisticated weapons to replace his Russian gear and he fears that Wagner could shut down his oil fields. “Given Wagner’s military resources in the country, Russian mercenaries could overthrow the authorities in the eastern part of Libya without too much trouble,” says the Pulaski report.
The U.S. and its allies may ultimately be forced to draw the line in Sudan where the government remains besieged by Dagalo, who has close ties with the Iranian-backed Houthis trying to close the Red Sea to western shipping. There are signs that Ukrainian special forces, possibly contracted through NATO governments, are already operating covertly against Wagner teams supporting Dagalo. A video recently broadcast on CNN shows Ukrainian markings on drones used to attack a Russian convoy entering the Sudanese city of Omdurman.
Africa has always been the scene of proxy wars. The Soviet Union used Cuban troops to install pro-Moscow regimes in Angola, Mozambique, and Ethiopia during the Cold War. A former head of the French intelligence service (DGSE) once told me of how special forces of its Direct Action Service were ordered into the presidential palace in Bangui to fight off a pro-Soviet coup attempt in the 1980s. French President Macron declined to do it in Niger, but such high risk operations may soon be necessary to counter strategic Russian advances in the increasingly unstable region.
Putler believes all of Africa should be Russian people....well, at least 2nd class slaves, i mean citizens. that's why the Russians are fighting for Ukraine, they want to be 2nd class slaves...i mean citizens.
"Russia sucks." ---- Me, US Army (retired) 12B & 51B
Russian Admiral said, after the Moskva sank, "we have the world's worst navy but we aren't as bad as our army".
