Africa-Press – Lesotho. Jessica Mendoza: Could you introduce yourself and tell us what you cover? Benoit Faucon: Yes. So I’m Benoit Faucon. I’m a reporter covering Africa and the Middle East.
Jessica Mendoza: Our colleague Benoit has been keeping a close eye on The Wagner Group, the private mercenary company that represents Russian interests around the world.
Last month, the group’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was killed. Speaker 3: Right now we’re following breaking news out of Russia where a business jet crash has killed 10 people.
Speaker 4: It’s been confirmed that Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of The Wagner Group, was on board the private jet. Speaker 5: Prigozhin has been killed in a plane crash, in a flight from Moscow to St.
Petersburg. Jessica Mendoza: Many thought that Prigozhin’s death marked an end to Wagner. Was that your impression too? Benoit Faucon: Not exactly, because he not only created a brand, but also created an ecosystem.
Jessica Mendoza: An ecosystem that reaches into many countries across Africa. It includes Wagner’s armies and mercenaries, and also its companies, and gold and diamond mines. All of it is estimated to be worth billions of dollars.
Benoit Faucon: So you can have that ecosystem surviving the death of its leader, with the same people, the same function, and with the government in Russia struggling to really take control of it because it’s too far, it’s too complicated, and it relies on personal relationships.
Jessica Mendoza: So it sounds like Wagner is very much alive. Benoit Faucon: Absolutely. I mean, at this stage, the networks, the people, the person on the ground, remains in place.
Jessica Mendoza: Now, one man, according to Benoit’s reporting, is the face of Wagner’s business empire in Africa. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.
I’m Jessica Mendoza. It’s Monday, September 25th. Coming up on the show, the man Looking after Wagner’s vast African network. After Prigozhin’s death, there was one big question a lot of people were asking.
Is anyone stepping up to fill the power vacuum that Prigozhin left behind? Benoit Faucon: I think it’s not actually, it wouldn’t be a good idea, as in becoming the new Prigozhin as in a prominent hellraiser, unfiltered, unhinged.
You don’t want to be that person. But you want to have the benefits of the power, the influence, and also because the financial rewards of playing a similar role, maybe at a much smaller scale.
Jessica Mendoza: One person Benoit has been paying close attention to is one of Wagner’s top lieutenants in Africa. His name is Dmitry Sytii. Benoit and his colleague put together a comprehensive account of Sytii’s role at Wagner by speaking with over a dozen people familiar with its operations.
That includes Wagner operatives, business partners, local politicians, and international security officials. And Sytii couldn’t be more different from bald, barrel-chested Prigozhin.
Benoit Faucon: He’s got the flowing hair of Chateaubriand, the 19th century French romantic poet. He’s very slim, very low-key. He’s not this other stereotype, put it that way, of the Wagner mercenary, tattooed, muscular, cropped hair.
He’s the actual complete opposite of that. Jessica Mendoza: Sytii is 34 years old. He was born in the Soviet Union, just months before the fall of the Berlin Wall. As an adult Sytii studied abroad, first in Spain, and then at a top business school in Paris. He’s fluent in Russian, English, Spanish, and French.
Benoit Faucon: He’s a symbol of that generation of really young, educated, and I would say even Western educated Russians who benefited from the opening of Russia to the full of the Soviet Union, make the best out of it.
But somehow remained deeply connected with not only Russia, but also the nationalist element in the Putin regime. Jessica Mendoza: Sytii graduated in 2015.
He got a degree in international marketing and business development. Then he started to look for work. Benoit Faucon: So he post a CV. He just graduated from the French business school and he said, “I want to work in high tech and I want to work in an international company.
” Jessica Mendoza: Our producer actually got a hold of that CV, that resume, and I mean, it looks like something I’ve made.
You know what I mean? Benoit Faucon: Yeah. Jessica Mendoza: It looks very much like just somebody right out of school looking for work. Benoit Faucon: So basically you do that, and you’d think you read that CV and say, “You want to work for Google, right?”
Jessica Mendoza: Sytii ended up at a startup that was nothing like Google. The company was called the Internet Research Agency, an innocuous name for an internet troll farm run by Yevgeny Prigozhin
Benoit Faucon: So in a way, at that stage, he knows that it’s not just another viral marketing company that is going to sell biscuits. It does other things.
But it’s clear that he’s got an attachment to his country and that he feels it’s the right thing to do. Jessica Mendoza: The Internet Research Agency was one of several Russian companies that the US accused of election interference.
Speaker 6: The indictment charges 13 Russian nationals and three Russian companies for committing federal crimes while seeking to interfere in the United States political system, including the 2016 Presidential election.
Jessica Mendoza: While the Russian government has denied that it interfered in the 2016 election, Prigozhin appeared to admit to those efforts last year.
After a little over a year working on disinformation, Dmitry Sytii was offered a new and very different position in the Wagner network, a job as an interpreter in the Central African Republic.
It’s a former French colony, smack dab in the center of the continent. Even though it’s rich in natural resources, it’s one of the poorest countries in the world.
Benoit Faucon: He lands in the Central African Republic as part of a list of people who’ve been allowed by the government to enter. At that stage there’s no Russian mercenary presence.
So he’s really part of that really core team. There’s mining executives there, for instance, political experts. And he’s just really described as an interpreter.
He is like a very low key guy. Jessica Mendoza: Right. He speaks multiple languages. Benoit Faucon: Exactly. Jessica Mendoza: Wagner operatives were invited to the Central African Republic by the country’s president in 2017.
They were there to fight rebel groups, but it was also a strategic move for Russia. From the Central African Republic. Wagner could bolster governments throughout the continent that are friendly to President Vladimir Putin, without stretching Russia’s military.
Benoit Faucon: So it’s really do things that the Russian government didn’t want to pay for and put it’s stamp on. So the job was that you projecting Russian power, but you’re not Russian government.
We can deny you exist. Jessica Mendoza: There was another important reason for Wagner to be in the Central African Republic. There was an opportunity to make a lot of money, and that’s what Sytii started to do.
He set up shop in the country’s capital, Bangui, overseeing the organization’s growing business interest in the country. He helped register a company that oversees gold and diamond mining.
And he started radio and television stations in Bangui that spread pro-Russian, anti-Western propaganda. Sytii also delved into other less expected industries.
Benoit Faucon: The beer has been nonstop promotion on the WhatsApp group. Jessica Mendoza: So this beer is Wagner’s beer, like they’re brewing? Benoit Faucon: It’s Wagner’s.
Yeah, they’re brewing their beer. Jessica Mendoza: Wow. Benoit Faucon: And that is a beer, we hear it’s not that great, but clearly it’s doing a lot of marketing. Jessica Mendoza: Wagner didn’t just get into brewing beer for its love of the craft. The group did it to challenge Western influence in Bangui.
Before Wagner arrived, the beer of choice for locals was a French brand, but Wagner used disinformation tactics to link the French beer to rebel groups and accused the company that made it of supporting terrorism.
Benoit Faucon: Now, that harks back to the beginning. Who studied viral marketing in Paris? That was Dmitry. And it seems like somehow he’s implementing what he’s learned at French business school in Bangui on the local Wagner beer.
Jessica Mendoza: All of this made Wagner popular in the Central African Republic. Some local politicians credit the group with bringing stability to the country.
And Wagner has such broad support there’s a statue in Bangui that honors the group. Benoit Faucon: Well, it’s a statue basically of soldiers showing protecting local children and family basically.
I mean, that’s really a reminder of the role that Wagner played in protecting Bangui and the government against rebels. And it’s interesting that every reference that is made to it is to Wagner.
So not Russia. So in a way, Prigozhin dead, but his legacy, the Wagner brand, the autonomous role that Wagner plays in Africa, remains. Jessica Mendoza: Wagner has successfully embedded itself in daily life in Bangui, but it’s not all beer and statues for Wagner in Africa.
There’s a darker side. That’s next. Over the last few years, Wagner’s work on the continent of Africa has expanded beyond the Central African Republic. The group helped local paramilitary forces fight a civil war in Sudan.
Speaker 7: Sudan, another major gold producer, has seen extensive Wagner involvement in mining and extraction, which continues despite the months long conflict.
Jessica Mendoza: Wagner fighters were briefly deployed in Mozambique to help fight Islamist rebels there. Speaker 8: The conflict is already taking a massive toll, with nearly 700,000 people displaced as a result of the violence.
Jessica Mendoza: And French officials say that Wagner led disinformation has encouraged military coups in the expulsion of Western troops from countries like Mali and Burkina Faso.
Speaker 9: now, the United States says it’s concerned about Wagner’s destabilizing influence in Africa and has accused it’s leaders- Jessica Mendoza: Each country that Wagner has entered has been pulled deeper into Russia’s sphere of influence.
Benoit Faucon: Wagner would do the homework before they come in. They very often send political scientists. And so what they map is ethnic groups X against another one. The one holding the power right now is this one, very often in the capital.
How can we reinforce that group and create either alliances with specific groups or on the other hand, crush adversaries that very often are not just on political lines, but also on ethnic lines.
Jessica Mendoza: And why does Putin want influence in the continent of Africa? Benoit Faucon: So if you think about the map, you have a direct, almost frontal war, against NATO in Ukraine.
And if Russia starts having a strip of land, of influence, that goes all the way from Sudan to the West African coast, a few hundred miles from countries like Italy or France, then the power to be a nuisance against NATO and Europe is going to be extremely significant.
Jessica Mendoza: Wagner fighters across Africa have been accused by the US government and international human rights organizations of kidnapping, raping, and killing civilians.
The group has also faced resistance. In December of last year, Dmitry Sytii was injured in an attack on a Russian cultural center he runs in Bangui. Benoit Faucon: A letter bomb, according to Prigozhin and himself, is sent to his office, explodes, and he lose several fingers.
He goes around in every picture ever since with a black glove. It sort of gives a sense that behind his fairly really, again innocent appearance, his life is not as light maybe as it outwardly seems.
Jessica Mendoza: After that incident, Sytii left the Central African Republic to recover at a Russian hospital. He returned to Bangui this spring. Soon after things for the Wagner group started changing fast.
Sytii’s boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was openly criticizing Russian officials. And then- Speaker 10: We begin this morning with our top story, spiraling tension in Russia.
Breaking overnight, President Vladimir Putin vows to punish mercenary troops mounting an armed uprising in Russia. Putin- Jessica Mendoza: Where was Sytii when Prigozhin led that rebellion against Putin in June?
Benoit Faucon: So as far as we know, he was in Bangui. And later on he gave an interview to one of the Prigozhin connected African outlets and said, “I’m continuing to work here, and I thank Yevgeny Prigozhin for all the great work that he’s done.
” So for the first time, it was the most explicit time for him to pledge allegiance to Prigozhin.
Jessica Mendoza: Sytii supported Prigozhin during the attempted coup. But when Prigozhin died in a plane crash two months later, Sytii was a little more ambiguous.
Benoit Faucon: He kind of dodged a question about what would happen. He was asked, “What’s going to happen?” Like you say, after Prigozhin’s death. And his answer was “I really don’t know.
I don’t want to get into that. But we’re staying and we’re working. ” And to me that means the legacy, because during that interview is very, very supportive of Wagner and Prigozhin’s legacy.
Clearly, his message was that legacy is here to stay. Jessica Mendoza: Sytii has worked to keep Prigozhin’s companies running in Africa. Satellite images show that a Wagner goldmine in the Central African Republic is still operating.
What do we know about Putin’s relationship with Sytii? Benoit Faucon: Our impression is it’s pretty much in a very different sphere and level. I don’t think there is any, he’s a local extremely well-connected center of power and networker.
But the connection point with Putin was at the Prigozhin level. I mean, remember, he’s also lived in Central African Republic for the past at least six years. So, yeah. Jessica Mendoza: Right. And he’s young. He doesn’t have the same kind of history that Prigozhin has had with Putin. Benoit Faucon: Exactly.
I would say his relationship is going to be almost a connection point between all the Wagner business, disinformation, even sometime military networks, and for instance, the Russian embassy. We do know that he’s got a relationship with the Russian Embassy. That’s more at that level that things are happening.
Jessica Mendoza: And so in terms of the relationship between the Russian government and Wagner, would you say that the mutiny in Moscow and the plane crash that killed Prigozhin, is that all water under the bridge now?
Benoit Faucon: Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I would say anyone who has similar ambitions got the memo. You’d better be fairly low-key at this stage. So I think it’s not water under the bridge, it’s basically there’s a sense of reset into the Russian political class that they are red lines and you think you can cross them when you can’t.
Jessica Mendoza: In the weeks after Prigozhin’s death, the president of the Central African Republic told Moscow that he wants Sytii to stay in Bangui.
He said removing Wagner would disrupt his government’s efforts to fight rebel groups. Sytii continues to live and work out of a luxurious villa in the country’s capitol.
The villa once served as the President’s official residence. And recently pictures have surfaced of people in Bangui wearing shirts with Sytii’s face on them.
The shirts were first handed out after Sytii was injured in the December bombing. Earlier this month, Sytii told a Russian newspaper that, “We need to keep working and not lose heart.
” He added that he continues to work for Russia. That’s all for today, Monday, September 25th.
The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and the Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Gabriele Steinhauser. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.
https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/wagner-groups-new-frontman-in-africa/4ea16d47-3b65-4825-98e4-e7629e1db430
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