Russian President Vladimir Putin is moving swiftly to take control of Wagner mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s sprawling operations in Africa and the Middle East, days after his renegade ex-protege died in a mysterious plane crash.
A Defense Ministry-affiliated armed contractor is poised to assume charge of Wagner’s operations in the Central African Republic, said a person close to the Defense Ministry and two others close to the private military firm, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
All of Wagner’s covert overseas network is due to fall under effective Russian military command, according to a person close to the Kremlin and another person close to the Defense Ministry, ending a setup that gave Putin a veil of deniability but allowed Prigozhin to build enough independence to lead an audacious mutiny in June.
Putin signed a decree late last week ordering Wagner fighters and other mercenaries to swear allegiance to the Russian state. The move came after a top Russian military official visited Libya and Syria to assert government control over Russian operations previously contracted out to Wagner, a person close to the Kremlin said.
The future of Wagner’s operations is critical to the Kremlin’s goal of countering the West in Africa and the Middle East. By deploying an army of thousands of guns-for-hire, Wagner had allowed Russia to restore some of its Soviet-era clout in those resource-rich regions at the expense of the US and former colonial power France — and to do so at arms length.
Absorbing the mercenaries into official structures means Russia will relinquish that advantage but maintain, even reinforce, its influence in several countries.
“It was always expected that the rogue Wagner Group would be firmly re-clipped to the Kremlin’s leash,” said Alia Brahimi, an expert at the Atlantic Council who has advised several governments on the Middle East and North Africa policy. “But the bad news for Putin is that this now puts him personally in the dock for Wagner’s exploitation and abuses, and also for the dangers.”
The Kremlin referred a request for comment to the Defense Ministry, which didn’t respond to questions.
Prigozhin and some of his top lieutenants were on the Embraer SA Legacy 600 private jet that crashed en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg on Aug. 23 killing everyone aboard.
The US has said the crash may have been an assassination approved by Putin following Prigozhin’s failed uprising, suggestions the Kremlin dismissed as an “absolute lie.”
Once a close ally who carried out Putin’s dirty work on foreign soil, Prigozhin led a mutiny in June that amounted to the biggest challenge to his almost 25-year grip on power. While the president denounced the rebellion as “treason,” a few days later he met Prigozhin and Wagner commanders and promised to let the group keep at least some of its African operations, according to people familiar with the matter.
Prigozhin had deployed tens of thousands of recruits to fight in Ukraine. He blamed Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov for Russia’s failures there and accused them of trying to wrest control of his organization. His mutiny was aimed at ousting the two men. Putin has so far stood by them.
Despite Putin’s apparent reassurances, Wagner had faced increased pressure from the Defense Ministry in the weeks before Prigozhin’s death, the person close to the Kremlin said. Wagner was barred from using Russian military transport planes and the Kremlin had asked Syria to stop the organization from using the Khmeimim airbase near Latakia, the person said. That would have made logistics difficult for Wagner and the person said Prigozhin had made what turned out to be his final trip to Moscow to try to iron out those problems.
While Prigozhin was releasing a Wagner recruitment video from Africa in the days before the fateful crash, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was visiting Syria and Libya to negotiate the planned transition of Wagner operations to Defense Ministry control, according to the person and Sergei Markov, a political consultant with close Kremlin ties. Yevkurov made a third trip to Syria after the crash, Markov added.
“It’s clear we will maintain things as they are and perhaps even expand our presence,” said Markov. “The Defense Ministry will now be in charge but there will be a new head of these operations who will have to run their business activities too.”
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In Libya, Yevkurov’s visit a day before Prigozhin’s death marked the first official Russian military delegation to travel to the North African country, according to the Defense Ministry’s Zvezda TV. Yevkurov told eastern military chief Khalifa Haftar that Wagner forces who had supported his push for power in recent years would report to a new commander, Arab Weekly reported, citing a Libyan official with knowledge of the meeting.
A spokesman for Haftar’s Libyan National Army didn’t respond to questions about Wagner’s future in the country. The Syrian Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Yevkurov’s visit “suggests that – if anything – the Russian footprint in Libya might deepen and expand rather than shrink,” said Jalel Harchaoui, a Libya expert at the London-based Royal United Services Institute.
Wagner has a force of about 2,000 fighters in Libya, where it has responsibility for protecting major energy facilities under the control of Haftar, giving it leverage in an OPEC member that’s home to 40% of Africa’s oil reserves. The US has pressed unsuccessfully for Haftar to expel the Russian contractors.
In the Central African Republic, where about 2,000 Wagner mercenaries have propped up the government of President Faustin-Archange Touadera since 2018 and control a major gold mine, Prigozhin pioneered a new model for Russian foreign policy. Waging brutal campaigns on behalf of strongmen in exchange for access to natural resources, Wagner had built over the past five years an African empire that stretched from CAR to Sudan and even Mali.
Prigozhin built personal ties with African leaders, particularly in CAR, but officials there have said the government’s agreement is with the Russian Federation not Wagner and they’ll work with whoever the Kremlin appoints.
Asked if Wagner’s operations in CAR would be transferred to other entities controlled by the Defense Ministry, Touadera’s senior adviser, Fidele Gouandjika, said: “That is the message from President Putin.”
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