On Saturday, an attempted coup in the West African nation of Niger was quelled, in part, thanks to mercenaries from Africa Corps, Russia’s successor to the notorious Wagner mercenary army.
Increasingly, these brutal mercenaries have become a powerful tool for Russian influence in the continent which could, in turn, give Vladimir Putin leverage over Europe.
In Niger, hundreds of army mutineers seized a base in the capital, Niamey, and fired on the presidential palace. Eyewitness accounts suggest that forces loyal to the ruling military junta were having trouble controlling them, until the Russians intervened, with armoured vehicles under cover of a Mi-24 helicopter gunship.
Across the impoverished Sahel region, seriously imperilled by both ethnic guerrillas and jihadist movements, Moscow has replaced the West as the security partner of choice.
Africa Corps is a successor to Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenary group. After his abortive march on Moscow in 2023 and far-from-mysterious death when his private jet exploded in the sky soon after taking off from the capital, his African contracts were transferred to this new body, controlled by Russian military intelligence.
