Why it's business as usual for Wagner in Africa

Four days after Wagner group mercenaries marched on Moscow, a Russian envoy flew into Benghazi to meet a worried warlord. The message from the Kremlin to Khalifa Haftar, the self-styled general who runs much of eastern Libya, was reassuring: more than 2,000 Wagner fighters, technicians, political operatives and administrators in the country would be staying.

- Jason Burke

"There may be some changes at the top but the mechanism will stay the same: the people on the ground, the money men in Dubai, the contacts, and the resources committed to Libya," the envoy told Haftar in his palatial residence. "Don't worry, we aren't going anywhere."

The conversation, relayed to the Guardian by a Libyan former official, underlines the degree to which the Wagner group's deployments, and its extensive network of businesses, across Africa is yet to be affected by the fallout from the rebellion of its founder, Yevgeny Prigozhin.

The resilience of Wagner's commercial operations despite the turmoil in Russia strongly suggests Vladimir Putin's regime will seek to appropriate the lucrative web of hundreds of companies that Prigozhin has built, rather than shut it down, experts believe. In Libya, there has been no abnormal movement of Wagner personnel, other than the redeployment of a small detachment of 50 closer to the border with Sudan. The situation is similar elsewhere, according to sources in half a dozen African countries.

"For the moment, it looks like Wagner's operations are on hold. But they are successful and not so expensive, so it is very likely Wagner will be rebranded [by Moscow] while maintaining most of its assets and systems," said Nathalia Dukhan, the author of a recent report on Wagner's operations in Central African Republic (CAR) published by the Sentry, a US-based investigative organisation. "It is like a virus that spreads. They do not appear to be planning to leave."

Although attention has mainly focused on Wagner's combat role, particularly in Ukraine in recent months, analysts and western intelligence officials say that in Africa it is the group's economic and political activities that are important to Putin's regime.