Putin lies in the shadows after France loses sway in west Africa

Moscow has revealed its next target in resource-rich west Africa, where a deteriorating security environment is helping the Kremlin wrench influence over former French colonies from Paris.

Niger and its uranium mines are next, a series of pro-Putin voices have declared via the Telegram messaging service.

The same voices were chattering ahead of the coup d’état that toppled Burkina Faso’s government last month. Kremlin cronies were quick to exploit the chaos, backed by demonstrators waving Russian flags outside the capital’s French embassy. The fresh challenge will alarm French diplomats struggling to come to terms with Moscow’s exploitation of the chaos caused by a worsening insurgency in the Sahel.

Niger, the region’s only former French colony where Paris still holds sway, is essential for the nuclear power stations that provide 70 per cent of France’s electricity. In 2020, 34.7 percent of the uranium used in French reactors was from the west African country. If Paris lost this supply, the energy crisis would grow significantly worse.

Although few observers believe that Putin has the clout to run the region as Paris once did, many fear the growing presence of the Russian paramilitary force Wagner will leave jihadists as the uncontested masters of vast swathes of territory, notably in the Sahel.

 “I think France is at a major and long-term turning point in its relations with west Africa,” said Élie Tenenbaum, director of the Centre of Security Studies at the French Institute of International Relations in Paris. He said Russia was exploiting the uncertainty to pursue a strategy launched a decade ago in Africa of working with local factions “unhappy with what the West has to offer”.

The likes of Mali, Senegal, Cameroon, the Ivory Coast, Niger and Chad gained independence in the 1960s, but for decades Paris continued to pull strings in the countries that were once part of its empire. In Mali the French military intervened in 2013 to prevent jihadists marching on the capital, Bamako.

Now, however, France is losing its regional pre-eminence. This summer, the last of the 5,000 or so troops that had been sent to Mali left the country, completing what Le Monde called a “diplomatic and military humiliation”. It followed a putsch that brought in an anti-French regime. Not only did Abdoulaye Maïga, the new leader, describe President Macron’s government as a “junta serving obscurantism” but Mali agreed with Wagner for at least 1,000 Russian mercenaries to replace French forces in combating jihadism.

In the Central African Republic, Wagner has deployed about 2,000 mercenaries since 2018 against the backdrop of religious conflicts and a diplomatic shift away from France.

In Burkina Faso, Captain Ibrahim Traoré, the 34-year-old officer who took power last month, said the country wanted “other partners”. Yevgeny Prigozhin, Wagner’s founder and an oligarch close to President Putin, was quick to offer “support” to Traoré. The state-backed mercenary group is reported to be operating in nine African countries, and Burkina Faso is likely to be the tenth.

The US ambassador to the UN has linked the brisker pace of Wagner’s influence to Moscow’s war in Ukraine. “Rather than being a transparent partner and improving security, Wagner exploits client states who pay for their heavy-handed security services in gold, diamonds, timber, and other natural resources — this is part of Wagner Group’s business model,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield recently told a UN security council briefing. “We know these ill-gotten gains are used to fund Moscow’s war machine in Africa, the Middle East, and Ukraine.”

Yet with Russia embroiled in the war in Ukraine and its economy in recession, many doubt that it can become the dominant force in west Africa. Idayat Hassan, of Nigeria’s Centre for Democracy and Development, said the Central African Republic shows how sentiments can change: “The Russians were welcomed . . . but are now loathed for their plundering of natural resources and human rights violations that have made the lives of its citizens worse.”

Tenenbaum said that with France in retreat and Russia incapable of exercising long-term control, there would be one winner. “We are heading straight for a jihadist expansion with entire stretches of territory that are going to pass completely under jihadist control.