Army corps as Wagner replacement?
Prigozhin apparently feared from his Africa deals
08/24/2023, 10:15 am
At the beginning of the week, Prigozhin greeted in a video from Africa. Now he is said to have died in a private jet crash in Russia. According to the ISW, the Wagner boss feared that authorities in Moscow would torpedo his business on the African continent.
Shortly before his presumed death, Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin apparently tried to prevent the Russian military leadership from crushing his mercenary army. As the US think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reports, citing a Russian insider, Prigozhin’s “hasty” trip to Africa and back to Moscow was a reaction to plans and measures by the Russian General Staff to limit Wagner’s presence undermine the African continent.
According to the source, Colonel-General Andrei Averyanov, head of the GRU’s Special Operations Service, has been leading efforts to completely bar the Wagner group from activities on the African continent. In addition, there were plans to set up and train an army corps with more than 20,000 soldiers to replace the private army. Prigozhin deeply rejected these efforts and “made every effort to prevent this”.
According to the ISW, Prigozhin recently tried to show more presence in Africa. It was only on Monday that he appeared in a desert area in his first published video speech since the failed Wagner rebellion and campaigned for recruits in Africa. “The temperature is more than 50 degrees,” says Prigozhin in the video. He is working on “making Russia even bigger on all continents and Africa even freer”. In July, Prigozhin appeared with the ambassador of the Central African Republic on the sidelines of the Africa summit in St. Petersburg.
The US experts speculate that it is possible that Prigozhin had now traveled to Africa to secure further orders for the Wagner group independently of the Kremlin and the Russian Ministry of Defense. Averyanov is said to have been involved in several Russian assassination attempts in the past, such as the poisoning of defector Sergei Skripal and his daughter.
It is conceivable that Russian officials took advantage of Prigozhin’s panic and impulsiveness to eliminate Wagner’s top leadership, according to the ISW. According to unconfirmed reports from Russian media, Prigozhin and his associates attended a meeting with representatives of the Russian Defense Ministry before the plane crash near Moscow.