UKRAINE WAR BLOWBACK REACHES AFRICA

By Philip Obaji Jr.

As news spread across the Central African Republic (CAR) on Saturday that thousands of mercenaries from Russia’s Wagner Group had started to march to Moscow in a mutiny led by their boss Yevgeny Prigozhin, cabinet members in the restive African nation became very uncomfortable and started to phone each other with concern, according to a senior government official who spoke to The Daily Beast.

The CAR government has a very close relationship with the Wagner Group, which has built a spider's web of military and economic relationships over the past five years in a number of African countries, including Libya, Sudan and Mali.

In CAR alone, Russia has—over the last five years— sent weapons and hundreds of military advisers and Wagner mercenaries as an extension of the government’s security forces. The Wagner fighters have been intimidating locals and targeting citizens opposed to the private military company’s presence, while also exploiting the country’s mineral resources.

But Prigozhin’s decision to seemingly turn on his former ally, Russian president Vladimir Putin, set off panic among those who benefit from Wagner’s activities in Africa.