On the sidelines of the Russia-Africa summit, the head of Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, unexpectedly showed up in Saint Petersburg. That says something about Putin.
Saint Petersburg – Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin had for months Wladimir Putin and his military apparatus, insulted Russia’s chief of staff and defense minister, he and thousands of his mercenaries occupied Rostov-on-Don and left with tanks and weapons on Moscow to. The president suddenly described his former confidante as a traitor, the Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko negotiated an amnesty deal between Putin and Prigozhin, which sent the head of the Wagner Group into exile in Belarus.
Then, just a few weeks later, the surprising news: According to consistent media reports, Prigozhin was seen in Saint Petersburg, where he was apparently on the fringes of the city Russian Presidential Russia-Africa Summit part. African territory was until the beginning of the Ukraine War the main area of operation for Prigozhin’s Wagner mercenaries – and according to statements by both Putin and Prigozhin, it will remain so.
After the Wagner mutiny: Putin needs Prigozchin to assert state interests in Africa
Putin also reveals why Punishment of the Wagner boss whose uprising seems so mild just a month ago. In the eyes of many experts, Wagner is an important tool for Putin’s Africa policy, with which the Russian ruler can also secure his country’s interests on African soil with the help of the state-funded private army.
Like the US newspaper Newsweek reports, according to the assessment of political scientist William Reno from Northwestern University in Chicago, who specializes in Africa, there are several areas in which Putin wants to be more influential in Africa than the West. This included cooperation on safety issues, raw material extraction and energy generation. “To assert his state interests in Africa, Putin also needs Prigozchin for the moment,” says Reno. Whose Wagner group also plays an important role in co-opting African intellectuals in an anti-Western alliance.
Cooperation between Putin and Prigozhin: An important sign both internally and externally
For politics professor Mark N. Katz from the political faculty of George Mason University, the treatment of Prigozhin above all shows political calculation on the part of Vladimir Putin: “I believe that Prigozhin’s presence at the Russia-Africa summit is primarily aimed at African governments who to ‘calm down’ those who have worked with Wagner up to now”, Katz explains the possible attempt of Putin to demonstrate the support of the Russian Federation.
In addition, Katz sees a second symbolic effect through Prigozchin’s appearance in Saint Petersburg, which should also not be inconvenient for Putin: the public perception in Russia. With Prigozhin’s presence, Putin would have made it clear that the Wagner boss would continue to work “for Russia” and that “with Putin’s blessing”. This helps Russia’s rulers create a narrative that “the Wagner mutiny was not an attempted coup against Putin, that it was all just unnecessarily inflated by the West, and that Putin and Prigozhin are now working together.”
According to the Kremlin, the participants in this year’s Russia-Africa summit will come from 49 of the continent’s 54 countries. But only 17 of them dispatched one, according to one dpareport also included heads of state and government, suggesting a decline in participants. At the summit, Putin stressed that Russia had now concluded agreements on military-technical cooperation with more than 40 countries on the African continent. The West sees the summit as a declaration of intent by Russia to increase Africa’s dependence on the Kremlin. (saka with dpa)
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