The Wagner mutiny damages Russia’s policy in Africa – Pavel K. Baev
The
resonance from the June 24 mutiny attempted by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the boss of
the notorious Wagner group, remains strong, despite the attempts by President
Vladimir Putin to demonstrate a swift restoration of stability in Russia. The
full impact on the ability of Russian troops to withstand the Ukrainian
offensive is yet to manifest itself, but it is already obvious that Russia’s
international posture is seriously undermined. Characteristically, it was only
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who called Putin with expressions
of support, while China stated its position
on the lowest decently possible level – by publishing a statement from the
press service of the Foreign Ministry. Putin’s claim for the role of a champion
in the struggle against the US-dominated world order, which he seeks to replace
by a vaguely defined “multi-polarity” is inevitably compromised by his demonstrated
domestic weakness.
This
confusion is particularly apparent in Russia’s relations with Africa, which in
the last couple of years has become a priority
in Moscow’s foreign policy, even if the shortage of resources for investing in economic
development has weakened its diplomatic maneuvering. Putin’s discourse on
countering Western neo-colonialism
has never been convincing, but many political actors were impressed with his
readiness to challenge the US-led coalition and are worried about the new
energy in consolidating Western unity. Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune,
for that matter, was the guest of honor at the recent economic forum in St.
Petersburg and found it opportune to agree “with
everything Comrade Putin said”. Algeria continues to
rely on Russian export of arms, despite the growing
concerns about the reliability of this traditional supplier
and the quality of Su-30 fighters and S-300 surface-to-air systems, and even
staged small-scale joint military
exercises last November.
Even
more important for Moscow are the ties with South Africa, which is supposed to take
central stage in the much-advertised Russia-Africa
summit scheduled for late July in St. Petersburg. Cyril Ramaphosa,
South Africa’s President, led a recent peace
initiative, backed by leaders and officials of Egypt, Republic
of Congo, Senegal, Uganda, Zambia, and the Comoros (which presently holds the
chairmanship position in the African Union). Neither Ukraine,
nor Russia
were satisfied with the content of this initiative, but both found it
appropriate to welcome it, so a modicum of success was achieved in terms of African
public relations. A key controversy presently is about Putin’s
participation in the BRICS summit to be held in August
in Johannesburg in August (the date is not as yet agreed), because of the
arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court, whose authority is
recognized by Brazil and South Africa, but not by China, India, and Russia. Even
if some sort of special arrangement is invented, Putin may find it inopportune
to travel far from the Kremlin, because the mutiny, short and pathetic as it
was, exposed the dubious
loyalty of the elites.
Russian
diplomatic offensive in Africa has never worked in synch with the other
instrument of Moscow’s foreign policy – conflict manipulation by the deployment
of Wagner mercenaries. For that matter, none of the states involved in the
African peace initiative has had any encounters with the Wagner group, which has
turned the Central African Republic (CAR) into the main
hub
of its activities since late 2017. The track record of Wagner interventions is
far from stellar: The assault on Tripoli in spring 2020 resulted in a bad
defeat, and the short deployment to Mozambique in autumn
2019 was also
a fiasco. Nevertheless, the Wagner group, reinforced even with
some airpower, managed to consolidate
control over some oilfields in Libya, and the arrival of these
mercenaries to Mali
in late 2021 alarmed many stake holders in stability in the wider Sahel region
to this new threat.
Russia’s
aggression in Ukraine determined a profound transformation of the Wagner group,
which became a 50.000-strong fighting force, comprised from gangs of criminals
recruited in prisons, and the protracted battle for Bakhmut marked the high
point in its expansion. This mutation, however, was poorly compatible with its
role in Africa, where deniability was always a major feature. The US designated
the Wagner group as a “transnational
criminal organization”, and France more recently called the EU
to list it as a “terrorist
group”, and these sanctions have quite possible prevented
the expansion of its activities to Burkina
Faso,
from which the French forces were withdrawn in spring 2023. The June 24 mutiny
resulted in new
sanctions, but more importantly, it has compelled the governments
that employ the Wagner group, first of all CAR
and Mali, to re-evaluate the risks of these contracts.
The
“safe haven” that Prigozhin is granted in Belarus may turn out to be a rather uncomfortable
prison, as Putin cannot forgive the humiliation and will find a way to settle
scores with the “traitor”. It will be difficult for Russian special services to
reconstitute the Wagner group in a more controllable format and under a
different name, and those mercenaries who opt for relocation
to Belarus may find themselves not in a new base, but behind
bars. Moscow may try to sustain the para-military operations in Africa, but the
key people running the clandestine networks, such as the logistical
hub in Cameroon, are too closely associated with
Prigozhin – and are duly targeted by personal sanctions. The reputation that
the Wagner group has built over years (dirty as its is) cannot be transferred
to newly-established quasi-private para-military enterprises (even if owned
by Gazprom), so even Russian
experts suggest that the demand for semi-official
military services in Africa would probably be fulfilled by China.
Moscow
may find it necessary, rather than merely convenient, to pretend that the sharp
spasm of domestic political crisis has passed with no lasting consequences. It
is set to find, nevertheless, that its space for both diplomatic intrigues and
military interventions in Africa has contracted sharply and irreversibly.
Pavel K. Baev, Dr., Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO)
Dr. Pavel K. Baev is a Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO). He is also Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for the U.S. and Europe at the Brookings Institution (Washington D.C.), Senior Associate Researcher at the Institut Français des Relations Internationales(IFRI, Paris), and Senior Associate Research Fellow at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI, Milan). His research interests include the transformation of the Russian military, the energy and security dimensions of the Russian-European relations, Russia’s Arctic policy, Russia-China partnership, post-Soviet conflict management in the Caucasus and the Caspian Basin, and Russia’s Middle East policy, which is supported by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry. He writes a weekly column in Eurasia Daily Monitor.
To cite this work: Pavel K. Baev, “The Wagner mutiny damages Russia’s policy in Africa”, Panorama, Online, 03 July 2023, https://www.uikpanorama.com/blog/2023/07/03/pb-6/
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