DAKAR, Senegal: When abuses were reported in recent weeks in Mali — fake graves designed to discredit French forces; a massacre of some 300 people, mostly civilians — all evidence pointed to the shadowy mercenaries of Russia’s Wagner Group.
Even before these feared professional soldiers joined the assault on Ukraine, Russia had deployed them to under-the-radar military operations across at least half a dozen African countries. Their aim: to further President Vladimir Putin’s global ambitions, and to undermine democracy.
The Wagner Group passes itself off as a private military contractor and the Kremlin denies any connection to it or even, sometimes, that it exists.
But Wagner’s commitment to Russian interests has become apparent in Ukraine, where its fighters, seen wearing the group’s chilling white skull emblem, are among the Russian forces currently attacking eastern Ukraine.
In sub-Saharan Africa, Wagner has gained substantial footholds for Russia in Central African Republic, Sudan and Mali. Wagner’s role in those countries goes way beyond the cover story of merely providing a security service, experts say.
“They essentially run the Central African Republic,” and are a growing force in Mali, Gen. Stephen Townsend, the commander of US armed forces in Africa, told a Senate hearing last month.
The United States identifies Wagner’s financer as Yevgeny Prigozhin, an oligarch who is close to the Russian president and sometimes is called “Putin’s chef” for his flashy restaurants favored by the Russian leader. He was charged by the US government with trying to influence the 2016 US presidential election, and the Wagner Group is the subject of US and European Union sanctions.
Russia’s game plan for Africa, where it has applied its influence as far north as Libya and as far south as Mozambique, is straightforward in some ways, say analysts. It seeks alliances with regimes or juntas shunned by the West or facing insurgencies and internal challenges to their rule.
The African leaders get recognition from the Kremlin and military muscle from Wagner. They pay for it by giving Russia prime access to their oil, gas, gold, diamonds and valuable minerals.
Russia also gains positions on a strategically important continent.
But there’s another objective of Russia’s “hybrid war” in Africa, said Joseph Siegle, director of research at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies.
Siegle said Russia is also waging an ideological battle, using Wagner as a “coercive tool” to undermine Western ideas of democracy and turn countries toward Moscow. Putin wants to challenge the international democratic order “because Russia can’t compete very well in that order,” Siegle said.
“If democracy is held up as the ultimate aspirational governance model, then that is constraining for Russia,” Siegle said.
Rather, Wagner promotes Russian interests with soldiers and guns, but also through propaganda and disinformation, as Prigozhin has done for Putin before.
In Central African Republic, Wagner fighters ride around the capital Bangui in unmarked military vehicles and guard the country’s gold and diamond mines. They have helped to hold off armed rebel groups and to keep President Faustin-Archange Touadera in power, but their reach goes much further.
Russian national Valery Zakharov is Touadera’s national security adviser but also a “key figure” in Wagner’s command structure, according to European Union documents accusing the mercenary group of serious human rights violations.
A statue erected last year in Bangui depicts Russian soldiers standing side by side to protect a woman and her children. Russia is cast as the country’s savior and pro-Russia marches have been held in support of the war in Ukraine and to criticize former security partner France — though several protesters said they are paid.
“A Central African adage says that when someone helps you, you have to reciprocate. This is why we have mobilized as one to support Russia,” said Didacien Kossimatchi, an official in Touadera’s political party. “Russia has absolved us of the unacceptable domination of the West.”
Kossimatchi said Russia was “acting in self-defense” in Ukraine.
Such support from African countries is a strategic success for Russia. When the United Nations voted on a resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine, 17 of the 35 countries that abstained from the vote — nearly half — were African. Several other African nations did not register a vote.
“Africa is fast becoming crucial to Putin’s efforts to dilute the influence of the United States and its international alliances,” said a report in March by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, a non-profit set up by the former British prime minister.
Russia’s strategy in Africa comes at a minimal cost economically and politically. Analysts estimate Wagner operates with only a few hundred to 2,000 mercenaries in a country. Many are ex-Russian military intelligence, Siegle said, but because it’s a private force the Kremlin can deny responsibility for Wagner’s actions.
The real price is paid by ordinary people.
The people of Central African Republic aren’t more secure, said Pauline Bax, Africa Program deputy director of the International Crisis Group think tank. “In fact, there’s more violence and intimidation,” she said.
France, the US and human rights groups have accused Wagner mercenaries of extra-judicial killings of civilians in Central African Republic. A UN panel of experts said private military groups and “particularly the Wagner Group” have violently harassed people and committed rape and sexual violence. They are just the latest accusations of serious abuses by the group.
Central African Republic in 2021 acknowledged serious human rights violations by Russians, which forced Russian ambassador Vladimir Titorenko to leave his post.
The Wagner group has responded with a charm offensive — creating films designed to please the public, sponsoring beauty pageants and distributing educational materials that promote Russia’s involvement in Africa. Russian is now being taught in universities.
Russia has taken its Central African Republic blueprint to Mali and elsewhere in Africa. In Mali, there has been an “uprooting of democracy,” said Aanu Adeoye, an analyst on Russia-Africa affairs at the London-based Chatham House think tank.
Following coups in 2020 and last year, France is withdrawing troops from its former colony that had been helping fight Islamic extremists since 2013. Wagner moved in, striking a security deal with Mali’s new military junta, which then expelled the French ambassador and banned French TV stations. Tensions with the West have escalated. So has the violence.
Last month, Mali’s army and foreign soldiers who witnesses suspected were Russian killed an estimated 300 men in the rural town of Moura. Some of those killed were suspected extremists but most were civilians, Human Rights Watch said, calling it a “deliberate slaughter of people in custody.”
This week, when French forces handed over control of the Gossi military base, suspected Wagner agents hurriedly buried several bodies nearby and a Russian social media campaign blamed France for the graves. The French military, however, had used aerial surveillance after their withdrawal to show the creation of the sandy graves.
Both atrocities bear the hallmarks of Wagner mercenaries and Russia’s foreign policy brand under Putin, say several analysts.
“They have no concerns about minor things like democracy and human rights,” said Chatham House’s Adeoye.
Russian mercenaries are Putin’s ‘coercive tool’ in Africa
https://arab.news/m9w5z
Russian mercenaries are Putin’s ‘coercive tool’ in Africa
- The Wagner Group passes itself off as a private military contractor and the Kremlin denies any connection to it or even, sometimes, that it exists
- In sub-Saharan Africa, Wagner has gained substantial footholds for Russia in Central African Republic, Sudan and Mali
24 hours in Ukraine: A single day shows the reality of life as war hits 1,000 days
- The Associated Press fanned out across Ukraine to chronicle 24 hours of life just as the country prepared to mark a grim milestone Tuesday: 1,000 days since Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 20
It was 1:45 a.m. in an upstairs room in the eastern city of Zaporizhzhia, Natalia Panasenko’s home for just shy of a year after the town she thinks of as her real home came under Russian occupation. The explosion blasted a door on top of her, smashed her refrigerator and television and shredded the flowers she’d just received for her 63rd birthday.
“The house was full of people and flowers. People were congratulating me ... and then there was nothing. Everything was mixed in the rubble,” she said. “I come from a place where the war is going on every day. We only just left there, and it seemed to be quieter here. And the war caught up with us again.”
Nov. 11 was a typical day of violence and resilience in Ukraine. The Associated Press fanned out across Ukraine to chronicle 24 hours of life just as the country prepared to mark a grim milestone Tuesday: 1,000 days since Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.
The day opened with two Russian bombings — one that hit Panasenko’s apartment and another that killed six in Mykolaiv, including a woman and her three children. Before the day was even halfway done, a Russian ballistic missile shattered yet another apartment building, this time in the city of Kryvyi Rih.
Swimmers braved the Black Sea waters off Odesa, steelworkers kept the economy limping along, a baby was born. Soldiers died and were buried. The lucky ones found a measure of healing for their missing limbs and broken faces.
About a fifth of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory is now controlled by Russia. Those invisible geographical lines shift constantly, and the closer a person is to them the more dangerous life is.
In the no-man’s-land between Russian and Ukrainian forces, there’s hardly any life at all. It’s called the Gray Zone for good reason. Ashen homes, charred trees and blackened pits left by shells exploding over 1,000 days of war stretch as far as the eye can see.
Odesa, 6:50 a.m.
The waters of the Black Sea hover around 13 degrees Celsius (55 Fahrenheit) in late fall. The coastline is mined. Dmytro’s city is regularly targeted by drones and missiles.
But Dmytro — who insisted on being identified only by his first name because he was worried for the safety of his family — was undaunted as he plunged into the waves with a handful of friends for their regular swim.
Before the war, the group numbered a couple of dozen. Many fled the country. Men were mobilized to fight. Some returned with disabilities that keep them out of the water. His 33-year-old stepson is missing in action after a battle in the Donetsk region.
For Dmytro and fellow swimmers, the ritual grounds them and makes the grimness of war more bearable. He said the risks of his hobby are well worth the reward: “If you’re afraid of wolves, don’t go into the forest.”
Zaporizhzhia, noon
Managing the Zaporizhstal steel mill during wartime means days filled with calculations for Serhii Saphonov.
The staff of 420 is less than half its pre-war levels. Power cuts from Russian attacks on electricity infrastructure require an “algorithm of actions” to maintain operations. Russian forces are closing in on the coke mine in Pokrovsk that supplies the plant with coal. And the city is under increasing attack by Russia’s unstoppable glide bombs.
Right outside his office, a bulletin board displays the names of 92 former steelworkers who have joined the army. Below are photos of the dead. Staff hold fundraisers for supplies for colleagues on the front, including two bulletproof vests sitting in the corner near his desk.
“The old workers, they carry everything on their shoulders. They are hardened. They know their job,” Saphonov said. “Everyone knows that we have to endure, hold out, hoping that things will get better ahead.”
Chernihiv, 1 p.m.
Dr. Vladyslava Friz has performed more reconstructive surgeries in the past 1,000 days than she did in the previous decade of her career. And the injuries are like nothing she had ever seen before.
Her days start early and end late. In the first months of the war, she said, the hospital was admitting 60 people per hour, and eight surgeons worked nonstop. They’re still catching up, because so many of the injured need multiple surgeries.
On Nov. 11, she was rebuilding the cheek and jaw of a patient injured in a mine explosion.
“Appearance is a person’s visual identity,” she said. “There is work to be done; we are doing it. We have no other options. There are medicines, equipment and personnel, but there are no metal structures for reconstruction. There is no state funding for implants.”
She said she will not abandon her patients but worries that the world will abandon Ukraine as the war approaches its fourth year.
“The global community continues to lose interest in the events in Ukraine while we lose people every day,” she said. “The world seems to have forgotten about us.”
Odesa, 6 p.m.
Yulia Ponomarenko has brought two babies into the world in the past 1,000 days, including Mariana on Nov. 11. Her husband, Denys, is fighting at the front.
Their hometown, Oleshky, was submerged by flooding after the explosion of the Kakhovka Dam. But by then, she’d long since fled the occupying Russian forces, who target the families of Ukrainian soldiers.
Mariana, born healthy at 3.8 kilograms and 55 centimeters (8 pounds, 6 ounces and 21 inches), will grow up with an older brother and sister and a menagerie of two cats and two dogs.
“This child is very expected, very wanted. We now have another princess,” Ponomarenko said.
Kyiv, 9 p.m.
The actors can’t perform in their home theater in Kharkiv — too many bombs, too few people willing to gather in one place. So they’ve moved to the Ukrainian capital, where they played to a nearly full house on Nov. 11 as guests of the Franko Theater.
“Because of the war, the Kharkiv theater cannot play on its stage. We play underground. It is literally underground art. There are only two to three places in Kharkiv where we can play, and that’s it,” said Mykhailo Tereshchenko, one of the principal actors of the Taras Shevchenko Academic Ukrainian Drama Theatre, named for Ukraine’s most famous writer.
Yevhen Nyshchuk, director of the Franko, said the theater paused production for a few months after the war started. Now, it’s packed nearly every night there is a play, and the lengthy applause when curtains close is deafening.
The reason goes beyond the quality of a performance at this point, he believes, and expresses “this inner realization that in spite of everything, we will create, we will live, we will come, we will meet, we will applaud each other.”
UK farmers plan to protest at Parliament over a tax hike they say will ruin family farms
- The Labour Party government says only a small number of farms each year will be affected
- Some farmers have welcomed those moves, but many feel goodwill was squandered through missteps by successive governments
UK farmers are rarely as militant as their European neighbors, and Britain has not seen large-scale protests like those that have snarled cities in France and other European countries. Now, though, farmers say they will step up their action if the government doesn’t listen.
“Everyone’s mad,” said Olly Harrison, co-organizer of a protest that aims to flood the street outside Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office with farmers. He said many famers “want to take to the streets and block roads and go full French.”
Organizers have urged protesters not to bring farm machinery into central London on Tuesday. Instead, children on toy tractors will lead a march around Parliament Square after a rally addressed by speakers including former “Top Gear” TV host and celebrity farmer Jeremy Clarkson. Another 1,800 farmers plan to hold a “mass lobby” of lawmakers nearby, organized by the National Farmers’ Union.
Volatile weather exacerbated by climate change, global instability and the upheaval caused by Britain’s 2020 departure from the European Union have all added to the burden on UK farmers. Many feel the Labour Party government’s tax change, part of an effort to raise billions of pounds to fund public services, is the last straw.
“Four out of the last five years, we’ve lost money,” said Harrison, who grows cereal crops on his family farm near Liverpool in northwest England. “The only thing that’s kept me going is doing it for my kids. And maybe a little bit of appreciation on the land allows you to keep borrowing, to keep going. But now that’s just disappeared overnight.”
The flashpoint is the government’s decision in its budget last month to scrap a tax break dating from the 1990s that exempts agricultural property from inheritance tax. From April 2026, farms worth more than 1 million pounds ($1.3 million) face a 20 percent tax when the owner dies and they are passed on to the next generation. That is half the 40 percent inheritance tax rate levied on other land and property in the UK
Starmer’s center-left government says the “vast majority” of farms – about 75 percent — will not be affected, and various loopholes mean that a farming couple can pass on an estate worth up to 3 million pounds ($3.9 million) to their children free of tax.
Supporters of the tax say it will recoup money from wealthy people who have bought up agricultural land as an investment, driving up the cost of farmland in the process.
“It’s become the most effective way for the super-rich to avoid paying their inheritance tax,” Environment Secretary Steve Reed wrote in the Daily Telegraph, adding that high land prices were “robbing young farmers of the dream of owning their own farm.”
But the famers’ union says more than 60 percent of working farms could face a tax hit. And while farms may be worth a lot on paper, profits are often small. Government figures show that income for most types of farms fell in the year to the end of February 2024, in some cases by more than 70 percent. Average farm income ranged from about 17,000 pounds ($21,000) for grazing livestock farms to 143,000 pounds ($180,000) for specialist poultry farms.
The last decade has been turbulent for British farmers. Many farmers backed Brexit as a chance to get out of the EU’s complex and much-criticized Common Agricultural Policy. Since then, the UK has brought in changes such as paying farmers to restore nature and promote biodiversity, as well as for producing food.
Some farmers have welcomed those moves, but many feel goodwill was squandered through missteps by successive governments, a failure of subsidies to keep up with inflation and new trade deals with countries including Australia and New Zealand that have opened the door to cheap imports.
National Farmers’ Union Deputy President David Exwood said the tax hike was “the final straw in a succession of tough choices and difficult situations that farmers have had to deal with.”
The government has “completely blown their trust with the industry,” he said.
The government insists it will not reconsider the inheritance tax, and its political opponents see an opportunity. The main opposition Conservative Party – which was in government for 14 years until July — and the hard-right populist party Reform UK are both championing the farmers. Some far-right groups also have backed Tuesday’s protest, though the organizers are not affiliated with them.
Harrison says the demonstration is intended as “a show of unity to the government” and an attempt to inform the public “that farmers are food producers, not tax-dodging millionaires.”
“It’s every single sector, whether you’re a landowner or a tenant, whether you’re beef, dairy, milk, cereals, veg, lettuce — you name it, everyone has had a hammer blow from this,” he said.
“Every farmer is losing.”
7 policemen kidnapped by armed men in northwest Pakistan
PESHAWAR: Unidentified gunmen abducted seven policemen from a check post on Monday in Pakistan’s northwestern district of Bannu, police said, as the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province battles a rise in militant attacks on cops and other government officials.
Pakistan’s northwest has seen a rise in militant attacks in recent months, which Islamabad says are mostly carried out by Afghan nationals and their facilitators and by Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and other militant groups who cross over into Pakistan using safe haven in Afghanistan.
The Taliban government in Kabul says Pakistan’s security challenges are a domestic issue and cannot be blamed on the neighbor.
Police data shows 75 policemen have been killed and 113 injured in militant attacks and targeted assassinations in 2024 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan.
“Armed men abducted seven police personnel from the Rocha checkpoint in the jurisdiction of Utmanzai Police Station in Bannu district,” District Police Officer (DPO) Zia Uddin told Arab News, saying up to 40 gunmen first surrounded the checkpoint in the mountainous area of Sub-Division Wazir on Monday evening.
“The armed men abducted seven police personnel from the Rocha checkpoint in the jurisdiction of Utmanzai Police Station in Bannu district.”
The militants also took away all weapons and equipment at the checkpoint.
“Four police personnel escaped as they were not present at the location at the time,” the DPO added.
The Pakistani government and security officials have said repeatedly that such attacks have risen in recent months, many of them claimed by the TTP and launched from Afghan soil.
The TTP is separate from the Afghan Taliban movement, but pledges loyalty to the Islamist group that now rules Afghanistan after US-led international forces withdrew in 2021.
Islamabad says TTP uses Afghanistan as a base and says the ruling Taliban administration has provided safe havens to the group close to the border. The Taliban deny this.
- This article is also available on Arab News Pakistan
Toxic smog persists over India’s north; Delhi pollution remains severe
NEW DELHI: Residents in India’s northern states woke up to another day of poor air quality on Tuesday, as a layer of dense fog shrouded most of the region, and pollution in the capital Delhi remained severe.
India battles air pollution every winter as cold, heavy air traps dust, emissions, and smoke from farm fires started illegally in the adjoining, farming states of Punjab and Haryana.
The air quality index (AQI) touched a peak of 491 in Delhi on Monday, forcing the government to introduce restrictions on vehicle movement and construction activities, and schools to conduct classes online.
On Tuesday, Delhi’s 24-hour air quality index (AQI) reading was at 488 on a scale of 500, India’s Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) said, and at least five stations in the capital reported an AQI of 500.
CPCB defines an AQI reading of 0-50 as “good” and above 401 as “severe,” which it says is a risk to healthy people and “seriously impacts” those with existing diseases.
Swiss group IQAir ranked New Delhi as the world’s most polluted city with air quality at a “hazardous” 489, although that was a significant improvement from Monday’s 1,081 reading.
Experts say the scores vary because of a difference in the scale countries adopt to convert pollutant concentrations into AQI, and so the same quantity of a specific pollutant may be translated as different AQI scores in different countries.
India’s weather department said a shift in the fog layer toward the northern state of Uttar Pradesh had helped improve visibility over Delhi.
Visibility dropped to zero meters in Uttar Pradesh’s capital Agra, which lies southeast of Delhi. The Taj Mahal, India’s famed monument of love, has been obscured by toxic smog for nearly a week.
The strict measures to mitigate the impact of high pollution have hurt production at more than 3.4 million micro, small and medium enterprises in the nearby states of Punjab, Haryana and Delhi, local media reported.
42,000 crowd New Zealand’s Parliament grounds in support of Māori rights
- For many, it was about something more: a celebration of a resurging Indigenous language and identity that colonization had once almost destroyed
WELLINGTON, New Zealand: As tens of thousands of marchers crowded the streets in New Zealand’s capital Wellington on Tuesday, the throng of people, flags aloft, had the air of a festival or a parade rather than a protest.
They arrived to oppose a law that would reshape the county’s founding treaty between Indigenous Māori and the British Crown.
But for many, it was about something more: a celebration of a resurging Indigenous language and identity that colonization had once almost destroyed.
“Just fighting for the rights that our tūpuna, our ancestors, fought for,” Shanell Bob said as she waited for the march to begin. “We’re fighting for our tamariki, for our mokopuna, so they can have what we haven’t been able to have,” she added, using the Māori words for children and grandchildren.
What was likely the country’s largest-ever protest in support of Māori rights — a subject that has preoccupied modern New Zealand for much of its young history — followed a long tradition of peaceful marches the length of the country that have marked turning points in the history of modern New Zealand.
“We’re going for a walk!” One organizer proclaimed from the stage as crowds gathered at the opposite end of the city from the nation’s Parliament. Some had traveled the length of the country over the past nine days.
For many, the turnout reflected growing solidarity on Indigenous rights from non-Māori. At bus stops during the usual morning commute, people of all ages and races waited with Māori sovereignty flags. Some local schools said they would not register students as absent. The city’s mayor joined the protest.
The bill that marchers were opposing is unpopular and unlikely to become law. But opposition to it has exploded, which marchers said indicated rising knowledge of the Treaty of Waitangi’s promises to Māori among New Zealanders — and a small but vocal backlash from those who are angered by attempts by courts and lawmakers to keep them.
Māori marching for their rights as outlined in the treaty is not new. But the crowds were larger than at treaty marches before and mood was changed, Indigenous people said.
“It’s different to when I was a child,” Bob said. “We’re stronger now, our tamariki are stronger now, they know who they are, they’re proud of who they are.”
As the marchers moved through the streets of Wellington with ringing Māori haka — rhythmic chants — and waiata, or songs, thousands more holding signs lined the pavement in support.
Some placards bore jokes or insults about the lawmakers responsible for the bill, which would change the meaning of the principles of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi and prevent them from applying only to Māori — whose chiefs signed the document when New Zealand was colonized.
But others read “proud to be Māori” or acknowledged the bearer’s heritage as a non-Māori person endorsing the protest. Some denounced the widespread expropriation of Māori land during colonization, one of the main grievances arising from the treaty.
“The treaty is a document that lets us be here in Aotearoa so holding it up and respecting it is really important,” said Ben Ogilvie, who is of Pākehā or New Zealand European descent, using the Māori name for the country. “I hate what this government is doing to tear it down.”
Police said 42,000 people tried to crowd into Parliament’s grounds, with some spilling into the surrounding streets. People crammed themselves onto the children’s slide on the lawn for a vantage point; others perched in trees. The tone was almost joyful; as people waited to leave the cramped area, some struck up Māori songs that most New Zealanders learn at school.
A sea of Māori sovereignty flags in red, black and white stretched down the lawn and into the streets. But marchers bore Samoan, Tongan, Indigenous Australian, US, Palestinian and Israeli flags, too. At Parliament, speeches from political leaders drew attention to the reason for the protest — a proposed law that would change the meaning of words in the country’s founding treaty, cement them in law and extend them to everyone.
Its author, libertarian lawmaker David Seymour — who is Māori — says the process of redress for decades of Crown breaches of its treaty with Māori has created special treatment for Indigenous people, which he opposes.
The bill’s detractors say it would spell constitutional upheaval, dilute Indigenous rights, and has provoked divisive rhetoric about Māori — who are still disadvantaged on almost every social and economic metric, despite attempts by the courts and lawmakers in recent decades to rectify inequities caused in large part by breaches of the treaty.
It is not expected to ever become law, but Seymour made a political deal that saw it shepherded through a first vote last Thursday. In a statement Tuesday, he said the public could now make submissions on the bill — which he hopes will reverse in popularity and experience a swell of support.
Seymour briefly walked out onto Parliament’s forecourt to observe the protest, although he was not among the lawmakers invited to speak. Some in the crowd booed him.
The protest was “a long time coming,” said Papa Heta, one of the marchers, who said Māori sought acknowledgement and respect.
“We hope that we can unite with our Pākehā friends, Europeans,” he added. “Unfortunately there are those that make decisions that put us in a difficult place.”
