Marsha Blackburn Calls for More Attention to Russian Wagner Group in Africa

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is calling on the Department of Defense to make more public the activities of the Russian proxy militia, known as the Wagner Group, on the African continent and around the world.

Blackburn, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, successfully added a provision to the committee’s proposed 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, which authorizes DOD activities and spending for the next fiscal year, that would require the DOD to publicly release information about the group to Congress, the American public, as well as partners and allies.

“The New Axis of Evil – China, Iran, Russia, and North Korea – is a threat to American interests and global democratic goals. By challenging Russia’s use of the Wagner Group as a proxy, the U.S. is putting pressure on their operations in Africa and publicly revealing their clandestine efforts throughout the rest of the world,” Blackburn said in a statement to Breitbart News on Monday.

U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) speaks during a hearing before Senate Judiciary Committee December 10, 2019 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The committee held a hearing on “Encryption and Lawful Access: Evaluating Benefits and Risks to Public Safety and Privacy.” (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) speaks during a hearing before Senate Judiciary Committee on December 10, 2019, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The NDAA proposal, called a markup, passed out of the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, and will be introduced to the Senate in the coming days to be considered.

Blackburn has been tracking the Wagner Group’s activities in Africa and has praised U.S. Africa Command for publicizing the group’s malign activities in Libya in 2020, which she believes had a positive impact.

The Wagner Group first emerged after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s 2014 invasion of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, where its proxy fighters partnered with pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine. According to a recent report in the New York Times, the group’s commander at the time was a retired Russian Special Forces commander, Dmitry Utkin.

The group then fought in Syria in 2015, when Russia’s military bolstered Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against a Sunni uprising that was later capitalized on by Sunni Islamic extremists. Wagner seized oil and gas fields in Syria and acted as mercenaries. The group has garnered a reputation for ruthlessness.

The group turned to Africa in 2017 under Russian tycoon Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, according to the Times. Progozhin is known as “Putin’s chef” since he started a catering business with lots of Kremlin clients. In Africa, Wagner has advised dictators, run social media disinformation campaigns, deployed fake election monitors, and operated gold and diamond mines, according to the news outlet.

The group has seized on distrust of the West to ingrain itself with some countries in Africa and helped build stronger ties between Russia and those governments.

Breitbart News reported last month that pro-government protesters in the Malian capital of Bamako unfurled Russian flags and banners with slogans such as “Down with France” in a bizarre demonstration. As tensions with France have risen, the Malian government has increasingly turned to Russia and Wagner for support.

The senator is also keeping an eye on Chinese influence on the African continent, having traveled to Djibouti, where China established its first military base on the continent.

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