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May 3, 2022 · Russian mercenaries have been accused of summarily executing, torturing and beating civilians in the Central African Republic (CAR). Witnesses told Human Rights Watch (HRW) that in one...
Nov 26, 2023 · The death of the mercenary group’s leader has created a window of opportunity in the Central African Republic for Western powers to offer an alternative.
- Overview
- Mines and mercenaries
- ‘Extractive, brutal, destructive’
BANGUI, Central African Republic — President Faustin-Archange Touadéra says he called in the Russians because he was stuck.
It was 2016, soon after his election, and rebels had overrun swaths of the resource-rich country, which is among the world’s poorest nations. Former colonial power France announced it would withdraw its soldiers, the backbone of a United Nations force aimed at quelling the country’s civil war.
And Touadéra’s army and militia didn’t have enough weapons to defeat fighters threatening the capital, Bangui, because the Central African Republic was under a U.N. arms embargo put in place after a previous rebel takeover.
So the former mathematics professor turned to Moscow.
While Russia received approval from the U.N. Security Council to deploy military trainers to assist the central African country’s government, Moscow sent in the infamous Wagner Group.
“I couldn’t sit idly by. I asked all my friends, including in the United States, including France,” Touadéra, 66, said during an exclusive interview with NBC News last week.
Wherever Wagner has gone, accusations of widespread and unchecked human rights abuses have followed, including executions, rapes and torture.
While Touadéra never used the word Wagner, Sewa Security Services and the Officers Union for International Security both operate in the Central African Republic on behalf of the mercenary group, according to the U.S. Treasury Department, which has sanctioned them.
Before the interview with Touadéra, an NBC News crew saw two of the top Wagner representatives in the country, Vitaly Perfilev and Dmitry Sytii, escorting a Russian television crew in the president’s offices. Perfilev has been sanctioned by the European Union for being “responsible for serious human rights abuses” while working for Wagner in the country.
NBC News, working with the U.S.-based investigations and advocacy group The Sentry, has looked into Wagner’s role in taking control of the Ndassima gold mine in the center of the nation, and developing the site into a large-scale operation with the potential to net the group hundreds of millions of dollars in profits.
Officially, the Russian “instructors” were on a mission to clear rebels from the area in 2021. However, witnesses and official reports accuse the group of targeting civilians, some of whom had been engaging in small-scale or “artisanal” mining in the area.
According to the Sentry, Wagner violently seized control of Ndassima.
Wagner’s influence extends throughout the continent, according to Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del.
“They’re an extractive, brutal, destructive influence” in African countries, said Coons, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a prominent voice on Africa in Congress.
Wagner is often brought in to help African governments with insurgencies, particularly in countries where an elected government has been overthrown in a coup and the U.S. is no longer a security partner, he said.
But the outfit has proven to be “unreliable” and “unsuccessful” in countering terrorism, and more focused on serving its own ends “to extract as much as they can in terms of money and mineral resources,” Coons said.
In the past several years, Wagner has become “a predatory mercenary force” in impoverished, unstable countries in Africa, including the Central African Republic and Mali, he added.
Asked to respond to reports of atrocities carried out by Russian fighters in Ndassima, presidential adviser Fidéle Gouandjika said in an interview at his home in Bangui that Russian soldiers conducted security operations around the mine and sites to clear rebel groups. He denied reports of atrocities.
May 31, 2022 · Best known for its mercenaries, the Wagner Group also mines diamonds, spreads disinformation and props up autocrats in an effort to grow Russia’s footprint.
Jun 27, 2021 · NAIROBI, Kenya — Russian mercenaries deployed in one of Africa’s most fragile countries killed civilians, looted homes and shot dead worshipers at a mosque during a major military operation...
Sep 18, 2023 · After Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s death, Wagner mercenaries will still operate in the Central African Republic but under direct control of Russia’s Defense Ministry, officials say.
