Russia’s military and mercenary involvement across the African continent is rapidly escalating, sowing instability and committing atrocities everywhere they go while competing with Western powers for influence.
The Soviet Union regularly initiated or facilitated numerous conferences, summits and roundtables within the Non-Aligned Movement to promote ideas of the anti-colonial movement in Asia and Africa, and to gain considerable influence in the former or still existing colonies. However, after the USSR collapsed in 1991, the activity of the Non-Aligned Movement immediately stopped, and the struggle against colonialism became unpopular among third parties.
But the Russian Federation under Vladimir Putin (the country’s second post-Soviet president, after Boris Yeltsin, who built an authoritarian regime after the latter’s resignation) has gradually reestablished influence in developing nations, primarily on the African continent.
The Kremlin has already organized large-scale Russia-Africa Summits twice (in Sochi in 2019 and in St. Petersburg in 2023), planning to conduct it every three years in the future as well as a regular dialogue called the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum. Under this “umbrella” various meetings, round tables, presentations of business projects, etc. take place– for example, the first ministerial conference of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum is scheduled ot take place in Sochi on November 9-10, 2024.
The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has invited representatives of 54 African states as well as 10 regional and subregional organizations to participate in the forum.
Mercenary wars
Undoubtedly, some European states–successors to former powerful empires–still try to maintain their dominance in one or another region of Africa, but Russia and China jointly deny the interests of the former metropoles and sideline them in every possible way. For example, Russia began to successfully squeeze France out of the entire region of Equatorial Africa, having initially strengthened its positions in the Central African Republic (a former French colony).
To strengthen its own positions in Africa, Putin's Russia had also improved its bilateral relations with some states of the continent, using not only political and economic methods but also military assets. For instance, Moscow has deployed mercenaries from the Africa Corps–a private military company run by the Russian Military of Defense, formerly part of the infamous Wagner Group–to Equatorial Guinea. This is just the latest country in West Africa or the Sahel region to see a deployment of Russian mercenaries.
There are similar contingents in Burkina Faso, Libya, Mali, CAR and Niger. Sometimes, the African Corps cooperates with mercenaries from other Russian private military companies such as PMC Shield, Russian Security Systems/RSB-Group, Redut, Patriot, and Sewa Security Services. According to the Russian media, the Russian PMCs mostly only guard important economic facilities - gold mines, diamond mines, uranium deposits, oil wells, etc.
But it is not always done peacefully.
Since 2016, about 2,000 Russian mercenaries have fought on the side of the Libyan National Army led by Khalifa Haftar and the Tobruk-based government in the civil war in Libya–they became notorious for torture, numerous acts of vandalism, and the brutal murder of several people, including women and children. Russian mercenaries allegedly burned people alive in containers, threw prisoners into mines and wells, and buried people alive (sometimes entire families). Moreover, they robbed, looted, and deliberately took local populations hostage to exchange for a ransom.
Victims who had no wealthy relatives were subjected to the most inhumane treatments by Russian mercenaries–these atrocities included dismemberment of living people, breaking vertebrae, disembowelment, detonating grenades in victims’ groins, crushing bones with a sledgehammer, and burning victims alive.
In 2018, the bloody traces of Russian mercenaries were found in Sudan, Congo, and the CAR–by 2019 in Mozambique and Mali, and by 2020 in Somalia, Burundi, and further on the African continent. According to experts, the Russian PMCs’ mercenaries are currently present on the territory of 19 African countries and several others around the world, including Venezuela, Syria, and Ukraine.
Russia’s involvement in Sudan’s civil war was proven when pro-government Sudanese forces mistakenly shot down a II-76 in the Malha area of North Darfur, which was transporting Russian military specialists, weapons, ammunition, and provisions on board to El-Fashir–a city held by the regular Sudanese army but surrounded by rebel groups.
For sure, the Kremlin officials will try not to mention the “heroic stories” of Russian mercenaries at the first ministerial conference of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum, but to focus on the political and economic cooperation. However, this partnership is dangerous to African states, for their political elites and general public alike, because Putin has betrayed multiple allies in the recent past.
Moscow’s influence on African internal politics
The fact is that Russian presence in any African country may be beneficial in the short term, but not in the long term because there is no doubt that Russia will try to seize control of natural resources. Taking into account the extensive development of the Russian economy (a backward agrarian and raw material economy), their involvement in the extraction of natural resources will certainly lead to serious environment pollution, and perhaps even the destruction of local ecosystems–as this is exactly what we see on the territory of the Russian Federation.
Moscow’s influence on the internal politics of African countries will reduce the level of political culture, resulted in various corrupt schemes and pervasive bribery.
The Russian Federation’s investment projects will surely have exploitative conditions and long-term loans with extremely high interest rates. Thus, both authoritarian Putin's Russia and totalitarian communist China are similar in Africa. In general, the People's Republic of China (unlike Russia) does not intervene in wars, civil conflicts and internal political struggles, but uses methods of aggressive economic expansion in Africa. Chinese businessmen buy up everything that can be sold in Africa and invest their own capital wherever it is possible to invest it. Moreover, China deliberately makes a seemingly failed investment, in terms of expected demand and profit, in order to spread its influence in Africa.
The dictator Putin gave free food to some African countries during the first two Russia-Africa Summits. It should be emphasized that such gestures of the President of the Russian Federation are only one of the components of his unfair policy of food blackmail of some poor nations and hungry countries of Africa. After all, the Kremlin has blocked a number of transport corridors from Ukraine (which has been growing grain for export for several centuries). Instead, Putin loudly makes his little one-time gifts to African states, using them in his brutal game. By the way, a grain exchange initiated by the Kremlin during the BRICS Summit (Kazan, October 22-24) may also turn into a tool of blackmail in the future guaranteeing global food insecurity.
As for the method of blackmail, Putin's Russia also allegedly uses African countries (primarily those with access to the Mediterranean coast) in order to control migration flows and latently manage them. The special services of the Russian Federation, in cooperation with international organized crime, allegedly influence the use of certain routes, the intensity of migration, and the determination of the final destination for migrants–today it is Spain, tomorrow Germany, then France, depending on Moscow’s needs to press some government. In addition, this cooperation between Russia and Africa provides the Kremlin with unlimited opportunities for the infiltration of its own agents in the Maghreb and Mediterranean region.
Of course, within the framework of Russia-Africa conferences, forums, and summits, Moscow is systematically working on the development of a simultaneous voting mechanism in the UN and in other international organizations. For example, to enable the Russian Federation and 54 African countries to unanimously condemn military operations in defense of the State of Israel from powerful terrorist groups with the support of other countries.
After all, Russia will try to gain support from Africa to ease or lift sanctions, or even better - to prevent the introduction of any restrictions by some countries on others, even if it is about a dictatorship, which committed aggression against democracy. In general, Putin’s regime cynically uses various forms of cooperation with Africa to strengthen its influence on the continent. However, he is doing quite well at the moment.
The question is whether the collective West will respond to this?
Image Credit: Florence Maïguélé, Corbeau News Centrafrique
