Wagner Group activities in Africa
Wagner Group fighters were already in Sudan and possibly Libya by December 2017, when veteran Russian officer Igor Strelkov acknowledged as much in an interview. Days before that interview was published, Strelkov had stated that more fighters were being readied to leave Syria for Sudan. Sudan's president Omar al-Bashir had told Putin his country needed protection from what he called the aggressive actions of the USA. What followed was years of Russian paramilitary operations stretching across the African continent. The Wagner Group, described variously as a Russian state-funded paramilitary organization and as a network of mercenaries, established a presence in the Central African Republic, Sudan, Libya, Mali, Niger, and Mozambique. Bohumil Doboš of the Institute of Political Studies in Prague found a precise label for what this presence produced in the Central African Republic. He called it a neo-imperialist and neo-colonial kind of state capture. By 2024, Wagner's African wing had been reorganized into a new entity called Africa Corps, placed directly under Russia's Ministry of Defense. The question this documentary examines is not simply what the group did on the continent. It is what the group took.
The PMCs working in Sudan operated under the cover of M Invest, a company linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin. Around 300 fighters arrived to protect gold, uranium, and diamond mines, according to analyst Sergey Sukhankin of the ICPS and Jamestown Foundation. The PMCs were deployed, in Sukhankin's words, to hammer out beneficial conditions for the Russian companies, with mine protection the most essential commodity. M Invest signed a contract with the Russian Defense Ministry for the use of the 223rd Flight Unit's transport aircraft. Between April 2018 and February 2019, those aircraft made at least nine flights to the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. Some recruits were former Ukrainian citizens enrolled in Crimea, according to Ukraine's Security Service. By 2018, a further 500 PMCs were reportedly sent to the Darfur region to train the Sudanese military.
When protests against president Omar al-Bashir erupted in mid-December 2018, Wagner's presence in Sudan became contested. By late January 2019, the British press alleged that contractors were helping authorities suppress the demonstrations. Demonstrators and journalists near major rallying points reported encountering groups of foreigners. Ukraine's Security Service identified 149 PMCs it said participated in the suppression; two were reportedly killed in the clashes. Between 30 and 40 people died during the protests overall, and more than 800 were detained.
Al-Bashir was deposed in a coup on the 11th of April 2019. Russia continued to support the Transitional Military Council that replaced him, which had agreed to uphold Russia's existing contracts in Sudan's defense, mining, and energy sectors. Wagner's operations became linked to Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, the RSF commander who served as the council's deputy chairman. In May 2019, Russia and Sudan signed a military agreement allowing Russian warships to use Sudanese ports. A November 2020 draft proposed a naval logistics center on Sudan's Red Sea coast capable of hosting up to 300 personnel for 25 years.
In April 2020, the Wagner-connected company Meroe Gold planned to ship personal protective equipment and medicine to Sudan amid the pandemic. Three months later, the United States sanctioned M Invest, Meroe Gold, and two individuals key to Wagner's Sudan operations, citing the suppression and discrediting of protesters. Near the northeastern town of Abidiya, in Sudan's gold-rich northeast, a Russian-operated mine thought to be a Wagner outpost was established 10 miles from the town itself. Western Sudan's Darfur region served a dual role. It was both a mining territory and a staging ground for Wagner's operations into the Central African Republic, Libya, and parts of Chad.
By May 2018, 1,400 Wagner PMCs were reported to be operating in the Central African Republic, with a second Russian PMC called Patriot focused on protecting VIPs. The deployment came despite an active arms embargo that had been in place since 2013. Wagner's stated mission was to protect lucrative mines, support the CAR government, and provide close protection for president Faustin-Archange Touadéra. The PMCs were also meant to fill the security vacuum left by France's withdrawal from the country. Their umbrella structure in the CAR was M-Finance LLC Security Service, a commercial firm from St. Petersburg affiliated with Yevgeny Prigozhin. Some PMCs were reportedly transported to Africa directly on Prigozhin's private aircraft. Prigozhin had been sanctioned by the United States government for alleged election interference before his death in August 2023.
By 2021, rebels had attacked and captured the fourth-largest city in the country. Russia responded by sending an additional 300 military instructors. In December 2021, a massacre took place in the village of Bèzèrè. Survivors and witnesses interviewed by The Daily Beast in September 2022 described torture, killings, and the disembowelment of women, including pregnant ones.
In mid-January 2023, Wagner sustained significant casualties when a new government offensive launched near the CAR border with Cameroon and Chad. Rebels claimed that between seven and 17 Wagner PMCs were among the dozens of casualties. A CAR military source confirmed that seven Wagner contractors were killed in a single ambush. Three Russian journalists had arrived in the country in late July 2018 specifically to investigate what Wagner was doing there, and within days they would be dead.
On the 30th of July 2018, three Russian journalists were ambushed and killed in the Central African Republic, three days after arriving to investigate local Wagner activities. The journalists, including Kirill Radchenko, belonged to a Russian online news organization called Investigation Control Centre, known as TsUR, which was linked to Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The ambush took place 23 kilometers from the town of Sibut. Armed men emerged from the bush and opened fire on their vehicle. The journalists' driver survived but was kept incommunicado by the authorities afterward.
Among the items that disappeared from the scene were an expensive camera kit and more than $8,000 in cash. Three canisters of gasoline, considered a valuable commodity in the CAR, were left untouched in the vehicle. A local official and the driver said the attackers had been wearing turbans and speaking Arabic. Russian and CAR state media initially reported that Seleka rebels were suspected. According to the Interfax news agency, robbery may also have been a motive.
A finding by Bellingcat's Christo Grozev added a different dimension. After the journalists arrived in the country, Wagner's Col. Konstantin Pikalov had issued a letter describing how they should be followed and surveilled. The journalists had also been denied entry to the PMCs' camp before the attack, told they needed accreditation from the country's Defense Ministry. The day before the ambush, they had visited a Wagner Group encampment at a location called Berengo.
In January 2019, investigators working for Khodorkovsky's Dossier Center found evidence that a major in the Central African Gendarmerie had been involved. The major was in regular communication with the journalists' driver on the day of the killings. He also had frequent contact with a Wagner PMC who specialized in counter-surveillance and recruitment in Central Africa. The investigation was suspended two months later due to lack of participation by government agencies and organizations. TV Rain, a Russian television station, reported that the Russian PMC Patriot was connected to the killings.
The Wagner Group's presence in Libya was first publicly reported in October 2018, when accounts emerged of Russian military bases in Benghazi and Tobruk. Those bases were there to support Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, leader of the Libyan National Army. Russia denied the report, but RBK TV confirmed the military deployment to Libya. By early March 2019, around 300 Wagner PMCs were based in Benghazi, according to a British government source.
Under Haftar's command, the Libyan National Army swept through the country's south, capturing the city of Sabha and Libya's largest oil field. A subsequent offensive against the Government of National Accord-held capital, Tripoli, launched in April 2019 but stalled within two weeks on the city's outskirts. Reports described Wagner fighters providing artillery support, deploying snipers, and laying mines and improvised explosive devices. The PMCs were also said to be equipped with laser-guided howitzer shells and using hollow point ammunition, in violation of the rules of war. A Wagner headquarters was established inside a hospital in the town of Esbia, where the PMCs were said to have detained and shot the family of a man who had stumbled upon the contractors by mistake.
By mid-November 2019, Western officials estimated the number of Wagner PMCs in Libya had risen to 1,400. The US Congress began preparing bipartisan sanctions against the group's Libya operations. A US military drone was shot down over Tripoli. American officials attributed the downing to Russian air defenses operated by Russian PMCs or by Haftar's forces. In September 2020, an estimated 25 Wagner personnel were killed in a drone strike, although Russia denied any involvement. The Government of National Accord recaptured Tripoli in June 2020, and a ceasefire followed in October of that year.
On the 31st of May 2022, Human Rights Watch stated that Libyan agencies and demining groups had linked the Wagner Group to the use of banned landmines and booby traps in Libya. Those devices killed at least three Libyan deminers before the mines could be located and cleared.
On the 13th of September 2019, 160 Wagner PMCs arrived in Mozambique on a Russian An-124 cargo plane, stationed in military barracks across three northern provinces: Nampula, Macomia, and Mueda. Wagner had won the Mozambique contract over two competing firms, OAM and Black Hawk, by offering lower costs. The PMCs were deployed to assist the Mozambique Defence Armed Forces against an Islamist insurgency in Cabo Delgado province that had been underway since the 5th of October 2017.
Twelve days later, a second Russian cargo plane landed in Nampula province and unloaded large-calibre weapons and ammunition. On the 8th of October, a Russian ship entered the port of Nacala carrying just over 17 containers of weapons, mainly explosives. By that point, the total deployment had reached 200 PMCs, including elite troops and three attack helicopters with their crews. At least one of the two cargo planes belonged to the 224th Flight Unit of the Russian Air Force.
The first joint operations began on the 5th of October. A PMC unit commander with the call sign Granit was killed, and two others were wounded, when their unit was ambushed by 60 insurgents. More than 35 insurgents and three PMCs were killed in subsequent operations as the military and contractors pushed militants into the woods. On the 10th and the 27th of October, two more ambushes killed seven Wagner PMCs in total. The 27th of October ambush was particularly devastating: five PMCs and 20 Mozambique soldiers were killed together. Four of the five PMCs were shot dead and then beheaded. Three vehicles were burned.
By mid-November, growing tensions between Wagner and the Mozambique Defence Armed Forces had left joint patrols nearly stopped. John Gartner, the head of OAM and a former Rhodesian soldier, said the Wagner Group was out of their depth. Dolf Dorfling, the founder of Black Hawk and a former South African colonel, said sources told him that Wagner had started searching for local military expertise. Around 200 PMCs withdrew from Mozambique following the deaths.
By early 2020, attacks in Cabo Delgado had surged to 28 in January and early February alone, spreading to nine of the province's 16 districts. On the 8th of April, journalist Joseph Hanlon published a photograph he attributed to Wagner PMCs operating helicopter gunships. Two sources cited by the Daily Maverick said those contractors instead belonged to the South African company Dyck Advisory Group, and that the Wagner Group had already withdrawn from Mozambique in March.
In mid-September 2021, diplomatic and security sources reported that an agreement to bring Wagner to Mali was close to finalization. Mali had been in a civil war since 2012, and a military junta had seized power in late May 2021. Under the proposed terms, Wagner would receive about 6 billion CFA francs per month for training the Malian military and protecting government officials. France, which had previously ruled Mali as a colony, mounted a diplomatic campaign against the arrangement. The United Kingdom, European Union, and Ivory Coast also warned Mali not to proceed.
In late December 2021, France published a joint statement co-signed by the UK, Germany, Canada, and 11 other European governments condemning what they described as the deployment of the Wagner Group to Mali. Mali denied the deployment, calling the foreign fighters Russian trainers present in a state-to-state partnership with the Russian Federation. By January 2022, Malian army officials confirmed that some 400 Russian military advisors had arrived. Photos showed 200 contractors already deployed in the town of Ségou from the end of December 2021. Clashes south of the city of Mopti at the start of January left one PMC dead.
Between the 27th and the 31st of March 2022, Malian soldiers and Russian PMCs conducted an operation in Moura, in the Mopti region known as a hotspot of Islamic militant activity. Human Rights Watch published a report on the 5th of April 2022 accusing the combined force of executing around 300 civilians. The operation reportedly involved more than 100 Russian personnel. The first officially confirmed death of a Russian military advisor, believed to be a Wagner member, came on the 19th of April 2022, when a patrol hit a roadside bomb near the town of Hombori.
On the 16th of June 2023, Mali's government requested that MINUSMA peacekeepers leave the country without delay. The UN Security Council approved the request on the 30th of June. On the 9th of September 2023, CMA rebels shot down the Malian air force's only SU-25 jet, while the jihadist organization JNIM shot down a Mi-8 helicopter operated by Wagner. The CMA declared itself at war with the junta two days later.
On the 14th of November 2023, government forces backed by Wagner captured the rebel stronghold of Kidal. On the 22nd of November, Wagner fighters flew their flag from Kidal's fort. The following summer brought a reversal. On the 25th of July 2024, a convoy of Wagner fighters and Malian soldiers was ambushed at a community called Tinzaouaten by the Strategic Framework for the Defense of the People of Azawad. A three-day battle followed. Russian Telegram sources estimated that between 20 and 80 Wagner personnel were killed, the group's biggest single-engagement loss in Mali.
On the 6th of June 2025, the Wagner Group announced the end of its Mali deployment, claiming it had completed its mission and killed thousands of militants and rebel commanders. Six days later, an investigation by the journalist organization Forbidden Stories found that across the entire deployment, Wagner had abducted, detained, and tortured hundreds of civilians. Those civilians had been held in former UN camps and military bases shared with the Malian Armed Forces.
The Blood Gold Report's author Jessica Berlin told NPR that Wagner's activities in Africa formed part of a cohesive global strategy. That strategy, she argued, funded Russia's military operations in Ukraine and Syria. The report found that between February 2022 and December 2023, Russia had earned over $2.5 billion from African gold. Extracted under the cover of security deployments, that gold was smuggled overseas and sold on the open market.
In April 2018, Wagner PMCs arrived in Madagascar to guard political consultants hired by Yevgeny Prigozhin for the presidential campaign of the sitting president, Hery Rajaonarimampianina. Rajaonarimampianina lost, finishing third in the first round. The same consulting team had also worked with the eventual winner, Andry Rajoelina. One of the consultants, Konstantin Pikalov, began as campaign security chief for a minor candidate called Pastor Mailhol, then transferred to Rajoelina's protection once Rajoelina emerged as the clear favorite. Before the outgoing administration left office, one of its last acts was to facilitate a Russian firm's attempt to take over Madagascar's national chromite producer, Kraoma. On the 9th of August 2018, the company's director Arsène Rakotoarisoa was dismissed after having paid a ransom of 100 million ariary for the kidnapping of four employees. Wagner PMCs were guarding the chrome mines as of October 2018. The Russian company that took over, Ferrum Mining, had a registered share capital of ten thousand rubles, roughly one hundred euros. It never injected funds, and by the end of 2022 employees had gone years without pay.
Writing for The Hill, analyst Stephen Blank called Russia's actions and ambitions in Africa the quintessence of imperialism. Internal analysts within the Russian government had reached their own parallel conclusion, acknowledging the neo-colonial nature of Russia's African policy. Russia also used its PMC network to conduct election interference and spread pro-Russian propaganda and anti-Western disinformation across the continent. In the Central African Republic, a 2022 joint investigation by European Investigative Collaborations, the French organization All Eyes on Wagner, and the UK-based Dossier Center documented that the Wagner Group had been controlling a diamond trading company called Diamville since 2019. Its years of African operations had also, by multiple accounts, driven recruitment into the very Islamic militant organizations it had been deployed to fight.
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Common questions
What was the Wagner Group doing in Sudan between 2017 and 2024?
The Wagner Group deployed around 300 personnel to Sudan under the cover of a company called M Invest, linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, to protect gold, uranium, and diamond mines. The group was also linked to the suppression of protests against president Omar al-Bashir in early 2019, with Ukraine's Security Service identifying 149 PMCs it said participated; between 30 and 40 people died in the protests and more than 800 were detained. Wagner continued operating in Sudan after al-Bashir's overthrow, supporting the Rapid Support Forces and helping Russia pursue a naval logistics center on the Red Sea coast.
How much money did Russia earn from African gold through the Wagner Group?
The Blood Gold Report found that Russia earned over $2.5 billion from African gold between February 2022 and December 2023. The gold was extracted under the cover of security deployments, then smuggled overseas and sold on the open market. The report's author Jessica Berlin described the enterprise in an NPR interview as part of a cohesive global strategy that funded Russia's military operations in Ukraine and Syria.
What happened to the Russian journalists killed in the Central African Republic in 2018?
On the 30th of July 2018, three Russian journalists from the Investigation Control Centre were ambushed and killed 23 kilometers from the town of Sibut, three days after arriving to investigate Wagner Group activities. Bellingcat's Christo Grozev later found that Wagner's Col. Konstantin Pikalov had issued a letter directing that the journalists be followed and surveilled. A January 2019 investigation by the Dossier Center linked a major in the Central African Gendarmerie to the ambush, finding he was in regular communication with the journalists' driver on the day of the killings.
Why did the Wagner Group fail in Mozambique and withdraw in 2020?
The Wagner Group suffered a series of ambushes in October 2019 that killed seven PMCs, including one attack in which five contractors and 20 Mozambique soldiers were killed and four of the five PMCs were beheaded. John Gartner, head of the rival security firm OAM and a former Rhodesian soldier, said the group was out of their depth fighting an insurgency in territory where it lacked local expertise. Around 200 PMCs withdrew from Mozambique by late 2019, with two sources later telling the Daily Maverick that Wagner had fully pulled out by March 2020.
What atrocities did the Wagner Group commit in Mali?
Human Rights Watch accused Malian soldiers and Russian PMCs of executing around 300 civilians between the 27th and the 31st of March 2022 during an operation in the town of Moura in the Mopti region. On the 6th of June 2025, the Wagner Group announced the end of its Mali deployment, but six days later an investigation by the journalist organization Forbidden Stories found that across the deployment, Wagner had abducted, detained, and tortured hundreds of civilians held in former UN camps and military bases.
What was the Wagner Group's role in Libya and how long did it operate there?
The Wagner Group operated in Libya from 2018 to 2024 in support of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army, with the number of PMCs rising to an estimated 1,400 by mid-November 2019. The group provided artillery support, deployed snipers, and laid mines; it was also accused of using laser-guided howitzer shells and hollow point ammunition in violation of the rules of war. On the 31st of May 2022, Human Rights Watch linked the Wagner Group to banned landmines and booby traps that killed at least three Libyan deminers before the devices were located.
All sources
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