US Urging Middle East Allies to Expel Russia’s Wagner Group from Africa

By Staff, Agencies

The United States is urging its Middle East allies to work on expelling Russia’s paramilitary Wagner Group from chaos-stricken Libya and Sudan where it has expanded in recent years, regional officials said.

Wagner – which is owned by oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin and has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin – is described by the Pentagon as a surrogate for Moscow’s Defense Ministry. It has deployed thousands of operatives in African and Middle Eastern countries including Mali, Libya, Sudan, the Central African Republic, and Syria.

Analysts have said that its aim in Africa is to support Russia’s interests amid rising global interest in the resource-rich continent.

“Wagner tends to target countries with natural resources that can be used for Moscow’s objectives – gold mines in Sudan, for example, where the resulting gold can be sold in ways that circumvent Western sanctions,” said Catrina Doxsee, an expert on Wagner at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

In Sudan, Wagner was originally associated with former strongman Omar al-Bashir and now works with the military leaders who replaced him. In Libya, it’s associated with east Libya-based military commander Khalifa Hafter.

US President Joe Biden’s administration has been working for months with regional powers Egypt and the United Arab Emirates to pressure military leaders in Sudan and Libya to end their ties with the group, regional officials told AP News.

A senior Egyptian government official with direct knowledge of the talks said Wagner “is at the top of every meeting.”

The group’s role in Libya and Sudan was central to talks between CIA director William Burns and officials in Egypt and Libya in January, while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also discussed Wagner with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi in a late-January trip to Cairo.