Russia’s Shadow on Africa
Al Jazeera (2025)
Film Review
This film is a fairly typical propaganda piece by Al Jazeera concerning the rising influence of Russia’s private mercenary army the Wagner Group in the Central African Republic (CAR). Giving up his career as a Kremlin caterer, Putin’s long time friend Yevgeny Prigozhin started the private militia in 2014 to support Russian separatist forces in Ukraine. Prior to arriving in the CAR, the Wagner Group also served as mercenaries in Crimea and Syria.
A former French colony, in 2018 the CAR requested Russian assistance in suppressing rising terrorist and Muslim separatist activity on the advice of the French government and the UN Security Council. The Russian government provided them with free weapons and Russian army officers to train their army. When the number of Russian troops stationed in the CAR reached 1,000, they were replaced with Wagner Group mercenaries.
The film includes extensive commentary by a former Wagner Group mercenary who resigned in 2023, owing to the Prigozhin’s growing influence on the Russian government. The former notes that by early 2025 the Wagner Group had totally infiltrated CAR society, starting language courses, local radio stations, beauty contests and beer and vodka companies.
The majority of CAR residents love them, for successfully ending years of terrorist and rebel violence after the failure of 15,000 UN peacekeeping forces to end the murders, rapes and kidnappings. By taking control of the diamond, gold and uranium mines, the Wagner Group has also stopped the theft of precious resources by gangsters,rebels, and smuggler.
A few residents make claims that that the Wagner Group also controls international trade of these valuable resources, as they appear to pocket all the profits. There are also complaints that the Wagner Group, which some blame for crushing food inflation, won’t “allow” the CAR president to organize free and fair elections. They are also blamed for teachers and doctors not being paid as of February 2025, when this video was produced. The film interviews a Muslim man and two Muslim women who complain about arbitrary Wagner violence against CAR Muslims.
Important Omissions
The filmmakers seem to deliberately imply the Russian government has dispatched the Wagner Group to illegally occupy the CAR and profit from their mineral wealth. However as an August AP article article clarifies, the Wagner Group serves in the CAR at the behest of the CAR president Fautin Archange Touadera, who pays them with a share in the country’s mineral wealth. The Russian government disagrees with this arrangement and is trying to pressure Touadera to contract with their government-run Africa Corps for security.
The film also conveniently omits any mention of the coup Wagner Group leader Prigozhin launched against Putin in 2023, his subsequent exile to Belarus nor his mysterious death in a helicopter cash a few month later. It also fail to distinguish between gold, diamond and uranium mines run by the Wagner group, and the half dozen Russian companies who CAR has invited to invest in mines since the French military was asked to withdraw in 2022. It also fails to mention the free food and fuel the Russian government has provided the CAR, nor the $11 billion they have invested in infrastructure development since 2023. Or a Memorandum of Cooperation the Russian Government signed with the CAR in January 2025, committing to assist the CAR to develop their rich mineral resources for their own benefit. See Interfax and ecomnewsafrique and Tass.
This comes after years of France monopolization of CAR mineral wealth without any assistance with industrialization or infrastructure development.
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