A message claiming to be from the head of the Wagner Private Military Company (PMC), Yevgeny Prigozhin, published on social media on Monday suggested that the mercenary organization would continue to remain active only in Africa for the time being – mere days after another claiming to be Prigozhin praised the coup against a pro-Western president in Niger.
Niger is the latest country in the Sahel region of Africa – following Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea – to experience military coups d’etat in the last two years, bringing into power governments far less hospitable to Western former allies and more interested in building ties with Russia and affiliates such as Wagner. The Wagner group has also maintained a pronounced presence in the Central African Republic (CAR) helping repressive governments stay in power.
Wagner’s ties to Africa have remained steady despite Prigozhin leading an apparent uprising against parts of the government of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin in June. On June 23, Prigozhin announced that he would turn thousands of Wagner mercenaries around from Ukraine and invade Russia, allegedly for a “march of justice” towards Moscow in retaliation for the Defense Ministry attacking his fighters. Prigozhin insisted he was not attempting to overthrow Putin but, rather, Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
Less than 24 hours later, the communist dictator of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko announced he had brokered an agreement between the Russian government, which had by then charged Prigozhin with the crime of staging an “armed uprising,” and Prigozhin that would allow Prigozhin to avoid criminal repercussions in exchange for taking his forces out of Russia and staging them in Belarus. Prigozhin has since largely avoided the public eye, with the exception of an apparent appearance with a CAR official at a Russia-Africa summit this weekend. Shoigu, meanwhile, was tasked with a high-profile visit to North Korea.
Abdourahmane Tchiani and other army commanders held a meeting in the capital, Niamey, Niger on July 28, 2023. Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani, the head of Nigera’s presidential guard, on Friday declared himself the new leader of the country after a coup. (Balima Boureima/Anadolu Agency/ Getty)
In July, the Kremlin claimed Putin had offered Prigozhin “further employment options” in a meeting following the original mutiny, baffling international observers.
The audio surfacing on Monday allegedly of Prigozhin appeared on a Telegram page known as the “Grey Zone” widely believed to be affiliated with Wagner. In it, the voice claiming to be Prigozhin, says his mercenary group has ceased recruiting due to a lack of necessity for new soldiers and that it would remain active only “in Africa and at training centers in Belarus.” Unlike in CAR and other African countries, Wagner troops in Belarus are not believed to be participating in any security operations or actively engaged in conflict, meaning, if Prigozhin’s statements are true, that Wagner is only offering services in Africa currently. Wagner was also highly actively in the war in Ukraine prior to the mutiny in June and in Syria; the latest audio reportedly does not address any potential Wagner activities in the Middle East.
“Right now, we are not facing a personnel deficiency and do not plan to carry out a new recruitment,” the voice claiming to be Prigozhin further states.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s (RFE/RL) Russian language service claimed that the audio allegedly of Prigozhin did not indicate a complete end to Wagner recruiting, but the voice said that the group would restart campaigns “as soon as the motherland [Russia] needed to create a new group” to “protect the interests of the country,” without elaborating. RFE/RL indicated that it believed the audio to be a genuine message from Prigozhin.
The latest message follows a similar Telegram audio surfacing last week also alleging to be Prigozhin in which he discussed the coup in Niger. On Thursday, uniformed soldiers appeared on national television in the African country announcing that they had overthrown democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum because Bazoum had failed to properly address growing jihadist terror threats in the country. They claimed that Bazoum was safe and imprisoned in his residence and that the coup leaders would respect international agreements. This weekend, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), led by Nigeria, declared they would consider invading Niger to reinstate Bazoum.
The audio allegedly of Prigozhin on Telegram, his typically preferred medium of public communication, did not indicate that Wagner had a presence in Niger already, instead simply praising the coup.
“What happened in Niger is nothing other than the struggle of the people of Niger with their colonizers. With colonizers who are trying to foist their rules of life on them and their conditions and keep them in the state that Africa was in hundreds of years ago,” the audio, published on Thursday following the televised coup, reportedly said.
“Today, this is effectively gaining their independence. The rest will, without doubt, depend on the citizens of Niger and how effective governance will be, but the main thing is this: They have got rid of the colonizers,” the message concluded.
Head of the Wagner Group Yevgeny Prigozhin left the Southern Military District headquarters on June 24, 2023 in Rostov-on-Don, Russia. (Stringer/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Unlike the message from Monday, news agencies have not confirmed with any confidence that the Niger message came from Prigozhin. “Reuters was not able to confirm with certainty that it was him,” the news agency reported, although crediting the message to him in the title of its article.
The Niger coup prompted thousands in the nation’s capital, Niamey, this weekend to flood the streets waving Russian flags and chanting Vladimir Putin’s name. The mobs assaulted the French embassy – France was once Niger’s colonial ruler, and its population remains largely Francophone – prompting the leaders of the coup to issue a message on Sunday discouraging vandalism and violence. The pro-Russian mobs also declared themselves in favor of the coup.
The alleged president of the coup, General Abdourahmane Tchiani, has not identified himself openly as an ally of Russia and has instead appeared to condemn Bazoum for being a poor ally to the United States and other Western actors.
“The current security approach has not made it possible to secure our country despite the heavy sacrifices made by Nigeriens and the appreciable and appreciated support of our external partners,” Tchiani said in his first nationally televised address as “president.” “We can no longer continue with the same approaches so far proposed at the risk of witnessing the gradual and inevitable disappearance of our country.”
The Russian government has also not expressed any support for the coup. On the contrary, top Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday that the coup was “cause for serious concern” and urged “restraint.”
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