The Russian terror of Wagner's heirs in Central Africa

New evidence turns the spotlight back on the violence of the former militiamen of Prigožin's Company who, in Bangui on behalf of Moscow, support President Touadéra in exchange for substantial interests in gold and diamond mining and timber harvesting.

Moscow (AsiaNews) – The heirs of the Wagner company, which for years looked after the interests of the Kremlin in Africa before the disappearance of its founder Evgenij Prigožin, have transformed themselves into a kind of ‘police above the law’ in the Central African Republic, robbing and terrorising the entire population.

Since 2018, Russian mercenaries have formed the personal guard of the president and senior officials of the Bangui government, and are responsible for training the country's armed forces.

As some African citizens told Radio Svoboda, at the end of January a group of 7 armed and masked people, who spoke with a Russian accent, arrived after midday, driving a pick-up, in the countryside where 35-year-old Privat Damabakisi was working, in a small village not far from the border with Cameroon.

Privat had spoken to his brother Elvin on the phone, telling him not to worry because he had no outstanding business with the Russians. The Russians, on the other hand, threw him in the car, began to beat him with sticks and chains and took him to an unknown location.

The following day, the local police informed his wife Nelli and his brother that Privat was accused of illegally trading certain items, presumably radio transmitters, stolen from the nearby military base, headquarters of the Russian mercenaries.

No one has seen Damabakisi since, nor is it known what happened to his body. Even talking to journalists is a source of great concern for Elvin, and for many others who refuse to respond or comment on similar events, which occur rather frequently.

Already in 2018, several Russian journalists, Orkhan Džemal, Aleksandr Rastorguev and Kirill Radčenko, who were making a documentary about the activities of the Wagner company, had been killed and made to disappear.

The Moscow Foreign Ministry and the Russian Investigative Committee have always denied the incident, and that Russian fighters may be involved, stating that the journalists were probably killed by local bandits.

Central African Republic is a country rich in natural resources, but for some time now it has been plagued by ethnic conflicts, leaving the population in a state of severe poverty and widespread and unstoppable corruption.

The Republic of Bangui has also been the testing ground for a dangerous political project, with a coup d'état entrusted to a private military company like Wagner, which combines military and commercial activities, especially in the extraction of gold, diamonds and timber.

Despite the many news reports from various agencies, such as Radio Svoboda and Currentime, that have denounced the actions of Russian mercenaries in this African region and others, such as in Syria and Ukraine, there seems to be no limit to their resourcefulness even after the formal dissolution of the company in 2023, and their more or less official recruitment into the Russian armed forces.

In the Central African Republic in particular, their status remains linked to the control of the central power without a legal definition, protecting the presidency of Faustin-Archange Touadéra, in power since 2015 and re-elected in 2020, when his opponent, François Bozizu, was excluded from the elections for rather dubious reasons.

After the death of Prigožin, the person in charge of Russian affairs in the Central African Republic is the diplomat Denis Pavlov, former Kremlin representative to UNESCO, the UN, the EU in Paris, Geneva and Brussels, but according to everyone else, more than anything else a high-level member of the FSB services.

His cover allows the former ‘musicians’ (of which there are over 2,000 in the area) to present themselves as government officials or representatives of state institutions, with total freedom of action throughout the Central African Republic. Throughout the country, from the cities to the countryside, the population lives in constant terror of the masked Russian men.