“A phased shift is happening in the world. And it’s a good thing.” That is Yevgeny Prigozhin’s bullish assessment on Telegram of the Wagner Group’s growing impact on the Global South. Under his leadership, the quasi-private mercenary force has quickly cemented itself as the most trusted security partner for governments in central Africa, supplanting France and creating enormous anxiety in the West.
In the process, Prigozhin has become the state-sanctioned tip of Russia’s foreign policy spear — a position that is unlikely to change anytime soon, despite recent reports suggesting that there is a growing rift between him and Vladimir Putin. The footprint of the Wagner Group has become indispensable, both for Russia’s war aims in Ukraine and for its longer-term stability. And Prigozhin is something of an enigma: he both represents the will and the policies of the Kremlin, while also being one of the few — and certainly the most prominent — voices inside Russia that can effectively challenge Putin’s state. While Kremlinology is a difficult art, it appears very possible that Prigozhin serves as controlled opposition for Putin: a hawk who can appeal both to domestic ultra-nationalists upset with the course of the war in Ukraine and to security-obsessed regimes abroad. In that sense, we should see Prigozhin more as a shadow defence minister than an entirely independent actor.
When asked about growing calls from within the House of Commons to declare his force a terrorist organisation — which the British government now plans to do within weeks — Prigozhin wrote on his Telegram channel: “The Wagner PMC has been fighting ISIL, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, and other terrorist organisations everywhere, and very successfully.” If Wagner is a terror group, Prigozhin sarcastically wrote in Russian, then perhaps al-Qaeda and the Islamic State should become humanitarian charities, they could even hold meetings inside Westminster. “I’m all for such an arrangement,” he wrote.
It’s remarkable smugness from the head of a fighting force responsible not just for brutal torture, executions, even possible war crimes — but for filming and broadcasting the atrocities to serve as propaganda. He presides over a group, staffed with special forces veterans and conscripted prisoners, that has helped Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad regain his grip on power in Syria and delivered some of Russia’s only recent territorial gains in Ukraine. And now, thanks to him, Russia is being venerated as an anti-colonialist, anti-terrorist power by governments and citizens in Burkina Faso, Mali, the Central African Republic, and further afield. As Jonathan Batenguene, a Cameroonian political analyst, explained to me, there is a rising perception in Africa that Russia is a “reliable partner in the struggle against terrorism”.
Prigozhin’s play in the Sahel should be a wakeup call to the United States and France in particular. Their decades of counter-terrorism operations in the region have not brought security: self-interested efforts have, in some cases, only fomented more militancy and violence.
If the West hopes to both stabilise central Africa and deny Russia new trading partners, it will need to get serious about solving the region’s substantial security challenges — and acknowledge its own role in creating them. One problem has been that the West has spent far too much time pursuing its own counter-terrorism objectives — that is, denying groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaeda a base from which to launch attacks on Europe and North America — and far too little considering how best to foster long-term stability. Even when state-building has been part of a counter-terrorist strategy, it has often not gone to plan: the United States’ long-running investment in Iraq or France’s long-suffering relationship with the Malian government are prime examples.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe