The authorities of the CAR announced that they will accept any Russian PMC instead of “Wagner”

The authorities of the Central African Republic declared that they are ready to accept any military assistance from Russia, if it decides to withdraw from the country the mercenaries of PMC “Wagner”. Thus, they confirmed that the forces of PMC “Wagner” were located in the Central African Republic with the sanction of the Russian leadership, the Financial Times newspaper believes.

Advisor to the President of the Central African Republic, Fidel Guanjika, said: “If Moscow decides to withdraw them [“вагнеровцев”] and send us Beethoven or Mozart instead of “Wagner”, we will accept them.

The forces of PMC “Wagner” under the guise of military instructors provide significant assistance to the government of the Central African Republic in protecting it from hostile paramilitary groups. It is claimed that in 2020 they suppressed the demand for an armed uprising. “Wagner” controls the extraction of gold and other minerals in the Central African Republic. According to the publication Politico, the profits of “Wagner” in the CAR in 2022 reached almost one billion dollars.

According to Katrina Doksa, an employee of the Washington Center for Strategic and International Studies, the forces of “Wagner” in the CAR have been integrated into local military structures, and the government largely depends on them.

In addition to the Central African Republic, the forces of PMC “Wagner” in Africa are present at least in Mali, Burkina Faso, Sudan and Libya.

• In 2018, a film crew of Orkhan Dzhemal, Alexander Rastorguev, and Kirill Radchenko, who was going to conduct an investigation in the Central African Republic about the activities of “PMC Wagner” in this country, was shot by unknown people. The investigation into the death of the journalists did not yield results.
• In 2021, CNN and the independent investigative group Sentry reported on the murders by mercenaries of PMC Wagner of residents of the CAR who were protesting against their eviction from their homes in order to expand gold mining at the Ndassima mine. In 2021, the French RFI also wrote about the atrocities of the Wagnerites in the Central African Republic.