Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, praised the recent military coup in Niger as wonderful news and offered the help of his men to restore order to the area.
A audio message purportedly sent by Prigozhin on Telegram channels connected to Wagner denied his involvement in the coup but hailed it as a long-overdue moment of independence from Western colonisers.
“What happened in Niger was nothing more than the struggle of the Niger people against their colonisers,” said one observer. The statement was uploaded on Thursday night. It said, “With colonisers who are trying to impose their way of life and conditions on them and keep them in the state that Africa was in hundreds of years ago.”
Today, they are acquiring freedom in this manner. ‘They have gotten rid of the colonisers,’ he continued. “The rest will undoubtedly depend on the people of Niger and how efficient administration will be.
The leader of Wagner, who attempted to overthrow Vladimir Putin last month but was unsuccessful, is still active today and is believed to be operating his organisation from exile in Belarus.
At this week’s Russia-Africa meeting in St. Petersburg, he was seen shaking hands with a representative from the Central African Republic (CAR), suggesting that he still has some formal ties to the Kremlin.
After claiming to have overthrown President Mohamed Bazoum in the sixth military coup in West and Central Africa in less than three years, coup leaders in Niger announced General Abdourahamane Tiani as the new head of state on Friday.
The nation, which is among the world’s poorest but has some of the largest uranium deposits, formally declared its independence from erstwhile colonial power France in 1960.
The Wagner organisation is still active in Africa, where they still hold security contracts in various nations, including Mali, Libya, Sudan, and the CAR. The most recent indication of this is Prigozhin’s voicemail.
For Western nations, including as France and the US, Wagner’s activities in Africa continue to be of concern. Although Prigozhin has asserted the group operates legally, Washington has accused it of perpetrating crimes and slapped sanctions on it.
In his voicemail, Prigozhin bragged about how effective Wagner was at stabilising and developing African countries, and in a video that was made public earlier this month, Prigozhin was heard ordering his soldiers in Belarus to prepare their energies for a “new journey to Africa.”
On Friday night, Prigozhin praised the success of the Africa summit in remarks made to the Cameroonian-based Afrique Media programme. He praised Putin for developing what he called trust-based one-on-one working ties with African leaders.
According to a transcript that was published on Wagner Telegram channels, he claimed that “Russia today offers both…economic relations and security exports, without which Africa today cannot exist.”
Mali, CAR, and Niger were mentioned as nations becoming “more and more independent” and he concluded, “The forum went well and we should see the results of it in the near future.”
The restoration of constitutional order in Niger, according to Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, was stated on Thursday.
The Prigozhin visits, according to analysts, showed that Wagner will continue to support the Kremlin’s foreign policy objectives in Africa and were intended to reassure African allies following the turmoil of the unsuccessful mercenary rebellion inside Russia.
Catrina Doxsee, a specialist at the American CSIS think tank, commented on messaging platform X, “Yes, it’s wild that Prigozhin is back in Russia, and apparently has been several times.”
But projecting normalcy and business as usual is also consistent with Wagner’s and Russia’s objectives.