Africa Corps (Russia)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Africa Corps did not exist before 2023, when Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner Group, died in a plane crash inside Russia. Russian authorities were suspected in his death. The Russian Ministry of Defence had long chafed at Wagner's independence, and with Prigozhin gone, it moved to absorb his Africa operations entirely. The result was the Africa Corps. The new group's name was borrowed from the Afrika Korps, the Nazi German expeditionary force deployed to North Africa during World War II. The Africa Corps chose those words deliberately, and behind the name lay a serious long-term ambition. Moscow's deployment of this force to countries as distant as Madagascar by late 2025 reflects how far that ambition reached.

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• 2. Taking Wagner's Place

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  Konstantin Mirzayants, said to lead a group called Redut, was closely tied to the Ministry of Defence's Africa operations. He was reportedly involved in the Africa Corps' creation itself. The Corps also cooperated with the Bears Brigade, another government-controlled formation operating on the continent. The Corps works through a mix of mercenaries and volunteers, and its total size has been difficult to measure precisely. Whatever its size, it was designed to be more tightly integrated with the Russian government than Wagner had been. Its operations stretched beyond Africa. The UK Defence Ministry reported that Africa Corps personnel were deployed during the 2024 Kharkiv offensive in Ukraine. That placed the Corps in an active European war zone at the same time it was expanding across Africa. On the 24th of January 2024, military personnel from the Africa Corps arrived in Burkina Faso. The initial contingent of one hundred was intended to grow to three hundred.

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• 3. Across the Sahel and Beyond

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  Ibrahim Traoré, Burkina Faso's interim president, was among those the arriving Corps personnel were specifically tasked with protecting. A dedicated base was established for the Corps in Loumbila, north-east of the capital Ouagadougou. The Central African Republic was next. Russia pressed the CAR government in early 2025 to shift from its remaining Wagner forces to the Africa Corps. By mid-2025, that handover was complete. Further east, a Russian delegation led by the Africa Corps met with Madagascar's interim president in December 2025. Michael Randrianirina and the delegation discussed personal security arrangements for the president. Russia sent military equipment and trainers to Madagascar in January 2026. The Alliance of Sahel States, comprising Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger, would become the Africa Corps' primary theatre of operations.

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• 4. Mali

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  In December 2024, one thousand Africa Corps soldiers arrived in Mali. Fifteen hundred Wagner fighters commanded by Ruslan Sergeevich Zlobin were already in the country. Wagner operated mainly in the north; the Africa Corps concentrated on Bamako and the central territory. That division ended on the 6th of June 2025, when the government-controlled Wagner Group announced it was leaving. Three Wagner commanders crossed over to the Africa Corps: Andrei Ivanov, known as Kep; Ruslan Zaprudsky, known as Rusich; and Alexander Kuznetsov, known as Ratibor. Each brought some of his men. US officials estimated that around two thousand soldiers from both groups had been present in the country. In the spring of 2026, the Corps carried out a rescue. On the 21st of April 2026, the Russian Ministry of Defence announced that two employees of a Russian geological exploration company had been freed. The men had been held by Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin in Niger for two years. Four days later, on the 25th of April, the Azawad Liberation Front shot down an Africa Corps helicopter. The crew and the mobile fire group on board were all killed. The Corps then abandoned its position in Kidal. The Corps had been officially mandated to provide military training and urban counterterrorism cooperation with allied governments. Malian refugees were describing something else.

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• 5. Reported Violence

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  In early December 2025, a fourteen-year-old girl reported that Africa Corps fighters had raped her after forcing their way into her family's tent in Mali. Her account formed part of a larger body of claims from Malian refugees. Those claims described burning villages, gang rape and sexual slavery, beheadings, and abductions. In November 2024, the United Kingdom sanctioned the Africa Corps alongside two other formations: the Espanola formation and the 81st Special Forces Brigade.

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• 6. Sanctions and the Strategic Picture

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  Foreign Secretary David Lammy listed the goals: countering illegal Russian activities, halting the destabilisation of African countries, and cutting supply for Russia's war in Ukraine. The Corps' presence in Africa was part of a calculated strategy. Russia was competing with the United States for influence on the continent, filling a security vacuum left by France's departure from the Sahel. Niger was a particular focus: Russia sought control over the country's uranium deposits and influence over migration routes crossing the region. Libya also fell within the Corps' documented areas of operation. At the heart of this effort sat the Alliance of Sahel States. There the Africa Corps had embedded Russia's military presence most deeply.

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