Yevgeny prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, is notorious for how he died: his private jet fell from the sky on August 23rd, many presume due to orders from Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president. Wagner is also notorious for its brutality in Ukraine: the group has been linked to the mass murder of civilians in Bucha.
But Wagner’s worst atrocities have taken place in Africa. Records show that the group has mounted far more attacks on civilians, and killed more ordinary people, in the Central African Republic (car) and Mali than they have in Europe.
The Wagner Group is a loose network of subsidiaries linked to the Russian state. It operates under contracts with foreign governments, providing services ranging from running disinformation campaigns to supplying fighters. It enables the Kremlin to partake in foreign crusades, seeding anti-Western sentiment and looting natural resources, with scant accountability.
Governments in the car and Mali hired Wagner to protect their regimes and quash insurgencies. Although there is no full public record of Wagner’s activities, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (acled), a research group, has sought to catalogue them using a patchwork of news articles, social-media posts and reports from human-rights groups. Since upping their presence in the car in 2020 and Mali in 2021, Wagner forces have been involved in some 35% and 10% of recorded violent events there, respectively.
Far from just fighting rebels, data from acled highlight Wagner’s propensity for targeting civilians. Attacks on ordinary people—which include abduction, sexual violence and torture—account for almost half of Wagner’s documented clashes in the car, and 60% in Mali. The same figures for state forces or big insurgent groups are between 13% and 37%. On-the-ground reporting from human-rights groups has flagged the mercenaries’ cruelty, too.
Wagner’s violence against civilians is not just frequent but deadly. Each Wagner attack on non-combatants recorded in the car led to four deaths on average, compared with just one in attacks involving the state or rebels. In Mali the figure for Wagner was almost seven, more than twice that of the state and insurgents there. There are reports of Wagner forces killing hundreds of people in single attacks, razing entire villages, and setting fire to homes with women and children trapped inside.
In total counts 1,800 deaths resulted from the group’s attacks on African civilians. The true number is surely higher. Journalists investigating Wagner in Africa face arrest. Three have been murdered.
Although the mercenary troops have been known to carry out opportunistic attacks for personal gain, some events were probably mandated by governments. In Mali and to a lesser extent in the car Wagner has worked alongside state forces to target communities thought to have links with rebels. The organisation also has financial goals. Wagner-linked firms control several diamond mines in the car. Heavy-handed security makes them hotspots for violence against civilians.
It is not yet clear what Mr Prigozhin’s death will mean for Wagner or Russia’s influence abroad. But whatever happens next, the mercenary leader leaves a horrific legacy.
Chart source: ACLED
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