Niger coup puts spotlight on the Wagner Group

After Niger’s junta ousted the African country’s elected leadership last month, one of the coup leaders asked Wagner’s “help” to stay in power, according to diplomatic sources.

The Niger coup, which is the third in Western Africa after Mali and Burkina Faso ousted what many call pro-Western governments, has given an opportunity to the Russian mercenary group to cement its presence in Africa, experts say.

Wagner’s boldness became obvious in June when its chief, Yevgeny Prigozhin, led a mutiny against the regular Russian military who he accuses of deploying wrong strategies against the Ukrainians.

“What happened in Niger has been brewing for years,” said Prigozhin, claiming that the military coup was a reaction to growing dissatisfaction with the Western power including Niger’s former coloniser, France.

France, Italy and other countries have pulled out their citizens from Niger after the July 26 coup. Days later thousands of people joined a protest in which some people waved Russian flags and attacked the French embassy.

“The population suffers. And this is (the reason for) love for PMC Wagner, this is the high efficiency of PMC Wagner. Because a thousand soldiers of PMC Wagner are able to establish order and destroy terrorists, preventing them from harming the peaceful population of states,” said Prigozhin. The mercenary group has lent soldiers to African governments to fight terrorist organisations.

Moscow has been careful in publicly backing the putschists.

Unlike Wagner chief’s clear support to the Niger military, the Russian foreign ministry has taken a softer approach, calling upon the coup leaders to release the elected President Mohamed Bazoum from custody.

But Wagner’s presence in Africa is not only about Prigozhin’s continuing influence but also about Russian political interests, making him “an indispensable man” for Russian President Vladimir Putin, says Edward Erickson, a former American military officer and a retired professor of military history at the Department of War Studies at the Marine Corps University.

“Russian influence and foreign policy in Niger, Mali, the Central African Republic, Syria and Libya absolutely depends on the Wagner Group. The Wagner Company is far more than a gang of ex-convict thugs. It conducts sophisticated disinformation operations, trains and equips local armed forces, and provides logistical support to its client states,” Erickson tells TRT World.

“Wagner is now very experienced in these kinds of ‘Gray Zone’ operations and the Russian military does not have the expertise or the people to replace Wagner,” he says. Prigozhin knows this, which explains “Putin's gentle treatment” of Wagner during his rebellion that Prigozhin described as a move against Russia’s “incompetent” military leadership, says Erickson.

As a result, if Putin dismantled Prigozhin’s mercenaries without finding an equally formidable replacement, which means another group of mercenaries loyal to the Kremlin, he would inflict a serious blow to Russia’s global geopolitical interests from Syria to Niger, says Erickson.

Sami Hamdi, a Middle Eastern political analyst and head of the International Interest, a political risk group, agrees with Erickson.

“Wagner remains a central component of Russia's foreign policy in Africa, and an essential tool through which Russia enhances cooperation with the regional powers such as the UAE in arenas such as Libya and Sudan,“ Hamdi tells TRT World.

Therefore, Putin would be very reluctant to discard such a valuable tool over a disagreement regarding military operations in Ukraine, according to Hamdi.

In a recent escalation, Wagner showed once again its military value as its troops apparently moved toward across the Suwalki gap, a crucial corridor, which connects Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave with Belarus, a pro-Russian state, located between Poland and Lithuania, the two NATO states, aiming to increase pressure on the Western bloc.

Wagner’s rise with the Bakhmut battle

Prior to the Ukraine war, Wagner was active in various conflicts from Syria to Mali, but the Russian state did not officially associate its military operations with the mercenary group until the meat-grinding Bakhmut battle in eastern Ukraine last year, says Esref Yalinkilicli, a Eurasia expert.

Till then, Prigozhin, who is called Putin’s chef because he owns a restaurant chain, was known to be a private man.

“While the Russian army was losing time at the front, Wagner forces alongside Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov’s forces entered Bakhmut and took it over, proving its war capabilities,” Yalinkilicli tells TRT World.

Prigozhin and Wagner used their success in Bakhmut to increase their influence in the Russian establishment, says Yalinkilicli.

The political analyst believes that Prigozhin’s outspokenness came in the wartime when both the mercenary group’s powerbase grew and Moscow passed laws banning any criticism toward the Russian army’s conduct in Ukraine.

This power dynamics, with the takeover of Bakhmut, Prigozhin has become the spokesperson for powerful Russian elites, who can not loudly criticise the Russian army’s “faltering” Ukraine strategy and Kremlin’s military policies, according to Yalinkilicli.

As a result, Prigozhin’s harsh words against the Russian defence ministry and military leadership do not only amount to his own opinion, Yalinkilicli believes.

This analysis alongside Wagner’s global expansion might explain why Putin continues to tolerate Prigozhin’s tirades against his top officers in the defence ministry and the military, he adds.

Can Putin rein in Wagner?

But Putin’s “gentle treatment” of Prigozhin might not last for long in the face of increasing tensions between Kiev and Moscow, which sees the fight as an existential battle for its survival against the West and its “proxy” Ukraine. Any distraction in internal bitterness risks Russia’s chances of winning the war.

During the Wagner mutiny, Putin issued a clear warning to Prigozhin describing his march on Moscow “a blow” like “the tragedy of the civil war” of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, which led to “intrigues, squabbles and politicking behind the backs of the army” resulting in the collapse of the Russian Tsardom. “We will not allow this to happen again,” he said.

After a series of behind-the-scenes talks between the Kremlin and Prigozhin, the Wagner chief, whose forces already marched more than halfway from Russia’s southern military district headquarters toward Moscow, backed down, and moved to Belarus, a pro-Russian neighbouring state. But after several days, Prigozhin was back in Russia.

During a meeting in June between Putin and Prigozhin alongside 35 Wagner commanders, the Russian leader reportedly offered the mercenary group to serve under the Russian defence ministry.

"Many of them nodded when I said this," said an uncharacteristically moderate Putin, during an interview with Kommersant, a Russian daily. But Prigozhin refused Putin’s offer saying that “No, the boys won't agree with such a decision," according to the Russian leader.

The Russian defence ministry’s previous efforts to integrate Wagner forces into the Russian military leadership was one of the leading reasons for the mercenary group’s march toward Moscow, experts say.

“The future of the Putin-Prigozhin relationship is murky,” says Eugene Chausovsky, a defence expert and a senior analyst at New Lines Institute.

“Putin's top priority is to ensure that Russia's security forces are consolidated under his leadership and to mitigate against the designs of ambitious and potential rogue actors like Prigozhin,” Chausovsky tells TRT World.

“Until now, Putin has managed to contain major fallout from Prigozhin's attempted mutiny, but that is not guaranteed to last forever. The extent to which Putin can successfully keep the security and political forces consolidated will have a significant impact on the evolution of the war in Ukraine, as well as within Russia itself.”