Mali: France threatens to withdraw if Russian mercenaries from the private Wagner group are sent

Officially, Wagner does not exist. The functioning of this Russian private company, its financing, everything is opaque. Wagner has several thousand paramilitaries, we don’t know how many. Originally veterans of the Russian army or security services, now of all nationalities. Shadow soldiers, highly paid to form official armies, but also to fight, and sometimes die, in conflicts in which Russia is involved, without always admitting it.

We see them for the first time in 2014 in eastern Ukraine, alongside Russian separatists, while Moscow denies any military involvement. We talk about them in Syria in 2015, when Vladimir Putin supports Bashar al-Assad: they are involved in all the big symbolic battles like the takeover of Palmyra. Here again, the Kremlin pretends not to know anything.

Wagner would be piloted by an oligarch close to Vladimir Putin, Evgueni Prigojine. A St. Petersburg billionaire with a gangster past, he made his fortune in upscale restaurants before turning to mining, gas and oil in Africa and the Middle East. A sulfurous man who has also embarked on battles for digital influence: his Research Agency is a huge troll factory regularly accused of digital destabilization campaigns in the West, especially during Donald Trump’s election in the United States.

Since then, its field of action has expanded, mainly on the African continent, where Russia places its pawns: Sudan, Mozambique, Libya, the Central African Republic… Every time there are suspicions, testimonies, some scandals, but never official confirmations. Today, its lobby targets Mali. Nothing has been signed yet, but the governing board is discussing a potential contract: 1,000 Wagner’s men to train the army and ensure the leaders’ protection. Juicy: ten million dollars a month.

Now we wish “diversify our relationships“, explains the Defense Minister in Bamako. Understand: distance yourself from the French presence.

And this does not please the French authorities very much: there cannot be French soldiers and Russian mercenaries in the same place. it is “incompatible” said Elisha.

There are at least four reasons for this. The first: France still has 5,000 soldiers in the Sahel. Of course, it has started to scale down its system, but it intends to continue its counterterrorism operations and its support for the army. The second: the arrival of Russian mercenaries risks undermining all peace efforts… while Paris and the Commonwealth of West African States (ECOWAS) try to convince the junta to organize elections to empower civilians.

So Paris knows all that France has to lose when Russia settles in an African country. In early 2018, in the Central African Republic, the arrival of dozens of Russian “military advisers” was accompanied by a violent anti-French disinformation campaign. Paris had ceased all military collaboration with Bangui. And finally, if the Russians landed in Mali, the United States would stop everything, depriving France of crucial resources, especially since, in the process, some European countries might also decide to disengage.

It will not be so easy to leave Mali. Paris is active behind the scenes so that none of Wagner’s mercenaries set foot on Mali soil.