The founder and leader of the Wagner Private Military Company (PMC) Yevgeny Prigozhin resurfaced on Monday in what appeared to be his first video production since a failed attempt to oust the leaders of the Russian Defense Ministry in June, urging “real heroes” to join the mercenary organization.
The video was uploaded to a pro-Wagner channel on the encrypted communications application Telegram. It was undated and appeared to be filmed in Africa, but Prigozhin did not specify his location, nor did the background of the video offer any evidence that could be used to track down the exact area filmed. Prigozhin appeared in sandy-colored camouflage gear, including what appeared to be a safari hat, in front of a sandy expanse with only what appeared to be an armored vehicle behind him, boasting that the weather was “50+ [at least 122 degrees Fahrenheit] – everything as we like.”
“PMC Wagner … makes Russia even greater on all continents, and Africa more free,” Prigozhin declared, according to a translation by the Moscow Times. “We’re recruiting real heroes and continue to carry out the tasks that have been set and that we promised to deal with.”
In other parts of his message translated by Al Jazeera, Prigozhin claimed that the temperature in the unspecified location he was filming was over 120ºF and that Wagner’s main targets in the region were radical jihadist organizations.
“The temperature is 50+ [at least 122 degrees Fahrenheit] – everything as we like. The Wagner PMC makes Russia even greater on all continents and Africa – more free,” Prigozhin allegedly said. “Justice and happiness for the African people. We’re making life a nightmare for ISIS [ISIL] and al-Qaeda and other bandits.”
Al Jazeera noted that the video concludes with a phone number for interested men to reach out to the organization.
The U.K. Guardian reported that, while the video itself offered no confirmation of where it was filmed, a research group dedicated to following Prigozhin’s activities known as All Eyes on Wagner reported on Saturday that a plane believed to be linked to the Wagner chief arrived in Bamako, Mali, this weekend.
“Russian social media channels close to the mercenary leader said Prigozhin was recruiting fighters to work in Africa and also inviting investors from Russia to put money into CAR [Central African Republic] through Russian House, a cultural centre linked to Prigozhin operating in Bamako,” the Guardian added.
This undated photograph handed out by French military shows three Russian mercenaries, right, in northern Mali. They have been linked to Russia’s Wagner Group, a private military company led by millionaire Yevgeny Prigozhin (French Army via AP, File)
The Wagner mercenary group has been heavily active in Africa – particularly in Central African Republic (CAR) and the Sahel region, which includes Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger – for years, helping military juntas and dictatorships maintain their strangleholds on power. Wagner activities include both the repression of legitimate political dissidents in the region, often through brutal human rights atrocities against civilians, and fighting jihadist insurgencies attempting to wrest power away from Wagner’s clients.
Wagner also maintained robust operations in battlegrounds alongside the Russia military, prominently in Syria and Ukraine, through late June 2023. Global military experts have long believed Wagner to have intimate ties to the regime of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin – and Prigozhin, a former chef, long believed to be a close personal friend of Putin’s. Prigozhin challenged that image in late June with a dramatic announcement from Ukraine, where he claimed that the Russian Defense Ministry, under Minister Sergei Shoigu, had bombed Wagner outposts in the country and killed hundreds of his fighters. In response to the alleged attack, Prigozhin launched a “march for justice” out of Ukraine towards Moscow, reaching the strategically important border city of Rostov-on-Don with minimal resistance and threatening to enter Moscow within less than 24 hours.
While many Western news outlets described Wagner’s attack on Moscow as a potential coup attempt against Putin himself, Prigozhin insisted in Telegram messages that he supported Putin and was attacking the Defense Ministry to protect him from the allegedly corrupt and incompetent leaders he had empowered there.
The Prigozhin mutiny ended abruptly the next day when the Russian government announced criminal charges for staging an armed uprising against Prigozhin. Communist Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko, a close ally of Putin’s, issued a statement announcing he would provide refuge for Prigozhin personally in exchange for the mutiny ending.
Wagner largely ended its activities in Europe, other than reportedly setting up a training camp in Belarus. The Kremlin confirmed in July that, following the failed mutiny, Putin met with Prigozhin and other senior Wagner leaders and, bizarrely, “offered them further employment options.”
Putin has made few public remarks regarding Wagner following the mutiny. In July, however, he suggested the Duma, the Russian federal legislature, must amend the country’s laws to address the fact that private armies are illegal in the country and it remains legally impossible for an organization such as Wagner PMC to exist.
“The [Wagner] Group exists, but it is judicially non-existent,” Putin told the newspaper Kommersant at the time. “The formal legalization is a separate issue that should be addressed by the State Duma [the lower chamber of the Russian parliament] and the government. It’s a complicated issue.”
Putin praised the Wagner mercenaries for “fighting with dignity” and has repeatedly suggested that most are sympathetic to his government.
Audio clips allegedly of Prigozhin and at least one photo of the warlord alongside a CAR government official have appeared since late June, but Monday’s desert video is the first media of its kind apparently showing Prigozhin in good health and actively engaging in mercenary recruitment activities. In audio messages allegedly from Prigozhin following the mutiny, he claimed Wagner would remain operational only in Belarus and Africa for the time being, leaving uncertain the fate of Wagner mercenaries stationed in Syria. Those in Ukraine are expected to move into neighboring Belarus, leaving the Russian military to continue its full-scale invasion of that country on its own.
Africa current offers Wagner the potential for significant expansion in the form of the latest coup d’etat in the Sahel, this time in Niger, where the head of the presidential guard General Abdourahmane Tchiani placed legitimate President Mohamed Bazoum under house arrest and declared himself president in late July. Coup supporters stormed the capital, Niamey, waving Russian flags and inviting Russian influence to supplant former colonial ruler France.
While Tchiani’s group, the “National Council for the Safeguard of the Homeland,” have not overtly invited Russia into the country – Niger still hosts over 1,000 American troops – an audio message surfacing in July, allegedly recorded by Prigozhin, praised the coup.
“What happened in Niger is nothing other than the struggle of the people of Niger with their colonizers. With colonizers who are trying to foist their rules of life on them and their conditions and keep them in the state that Africa was in hundreds of years ago,” the voice on the tape, allegedly of Prigozhin, said.