Kremlin-funded media outlets are reporting that Britain’s overseas intelligence service MI6 is preparing a sabotage team of 100 Ukrainian soldiers to be dispatched to Africa later this month in a bid to undermine Russia and the Wagner group’s growing influence on the Continent.
According to an anonymous source speaking to the Russian domestic news agency RIA Novosti, the deployment is to be led by Ukrainian intelligence officer Vitaliy Praschuk and consists of veterans from the Eastern Front.
Praschuk has previously served since 2014 in sabotage and reconnaissance operations against Russian separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk and has apparently worked with British intelligence in Zimbabwe before, according to the Russian report.
There is no confirmation from MI6 about the validity of the claims with RIA Novosti, regarded by many observers as a mouthpiece for Russian foreign policy interests. The Russian coverage makes specific reference to the presence of “Neo-Nazis” in the sabotage contingent echoing Kremlin talking points regarding the Ukrainian army.
Regardless, Africa has emerged as a new battlefield in the ongoing global confrontation with Russia as multiple juntas in the Central African Republic—Mali, Burkina Faso, and most recently Niger—overthrew their pro-Western regimes often with the assistance of the Russian mercenary force, Wagner.
The leading figure in the attempted putsch against the Putin government last June, Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, was actively courting African leaders at a recent Russia-Africa summit hosted in St. Petersburg last month, as Western policymakers voiced their fears that Russia could leverage its control of Black Sea grain routes to extend its influence in impoverished African nations.
While there is no confirmation about the validity of the claims made by the Russian media about the sabotage force, MI6 has traditionally taken a proactive role in Africa, with the UK maintaining active garrisons in Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Djibouti. Russia has previously claimed that Britain’s SAS has been actively conducting sabotage operations in Eastern Ukraine.
A report from the House of Commons’s Foreign Affairs Committee warned that Britain had badly underestimated the extent of Wagner’s role in Africa over the past decade and called for a massive increase in “intelligence gathering” and sanctions to combat the mercenary group.
MI6’s chief, Sir Richard Moore, outlined his service’s wish to redouble its efforts in recruiting Russian assets at a policy speech in Prague last month, as the spymaster issued a warning against African leaders considering enhanced economic ties with Russia.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has accelerated a crisis in post-colonial Western influence in Africa as the Kremlin has marketed itself as an anti-imperialist saviour to struggling African states with the promises of debt write-offs, stable food supplies, and the use of Wagner mercenaries to combat Islamists and rebels piquing the interest of many regional leaders.
The geopolitical standoff between the military junta in Niger and neighbouring Western-aligned African nations continues this week. President Putin accepted a phone call from pro-Russian junta leaders in Mali, allegedly to seek a peaceful resolution, amid rumours of a Nigeria-led intervention.
Africa is an important theatre in the war, as Europe and the West scramble to safeguard the flow of raw materials and stem the flow of immigration as Western-backed regimes falter in the face of rising anti-imperialist sentiments propelled by Russian propaganda.
