The plotters reportedly asked Wagner’s group to help them in Niger. Neighboring Mali already has mercenaries.
Blinken doesn’t think Wagner helped with the plot. However, the US is concerned about developments in the region. Wagner may have preferred to settle in areas of the Sahel south of the Sahara.
In Niger, there is hatred towards France, which the African country was a colony of. Deposed President Mohamed Basoom maintained close ties with the West. According to Blinken, Wagner now wants to take advantage of the situation in Niger to collude with the coup plotters.
Wagner leader Yevgeny Prigozhin has already announced his desire to “restore order” in Niger. “Uncertainty has increased (after Sattup, ed.), not decreased,” says Blinken. The minister points to coups in other countries that “have brought nothing but bad things”.
Wagner offers assistance in exchange for rights to minerals, among other things
Niger is an important base for French and US troops fighting jihadist groups in the region. Wagner was also in Africa before becoming known as a mercenary in the battle for the Ukrainian city of Bagmut. In addition to Mali, Wagner has forces in the Central African Republic.
Following Wagner’s short-lived uprising on June 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin withdrew Wagner forces from Ukraine. Part of the troops were sent to Africa to protect Russian interests.
In return for this assistance, often accompanied by human rights abuses, Wagner, for example, receives valuable rights to such a country’s mineral resources.
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Putin needs Prigozhin and vice versa
“Putin needs Prigozhin, Prigozhin needs Putin,” Brigadier General Han Baumeister explained to NU.nl last week. “It’s really a mutual relationship and they both get very rich from it.”
Deposed President Bassum has also warned of Russian influence in the region. “The entire Sahel region could be subject to Russian influence through the Wagner Group, which exposed its brutal terror in Ukraine, at the open invitation of the conspirators and their allies,” he wrote in an article last week. The Washington Post.