Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner mercenary group and a prominent figure in society despite having led a failed mutiny against the Russian army’s leadership last month, has praised the military takeover of Niger and said that his soldiers can restore order to the West African country.
Wagner-related Telegram app channels received an audio message from Prigozhin, who did not directly claim to have been involved in the coup but described it as a long-overdue moment of independence from Western colonizers.
“What happened in Niger is nothing other than the struggle of the people of Niger with their colonizers. With colonizers who are trying to foist their rules of life on them and their conditions and keep them in the state that Africa was in hundreds of years ago,” said the message, posted on Friday, Julyb28.
“Today this is effectively gaining their independence. The rest will without doubt depend on the citizens of Niger and how effective governance will be, but the main thing is this: they have got rid of the colonizers,” the message said.
Prigozhin, in his voice message, boasted of Wagner’s alleged efficiency in helping African nations stabilize and develop in what sounded like a sales pitch.
“Thousands of Wagner fighters are capable of bringing order and of destroying terrorists and of not allowing them to harm the local populations of these states,” he said.
After troops staged a military coup on Wednesday evening and detained President Mohamed Bazoum in the presidential palace, it is still not apparent who is in command of Niger as of the time of publication.
Then, on Friday, two days after his guards had detained and ousted democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum, Abdourahmane Tchiani, commander of the Niger presidential guard, proclaimed himself leader of a transitional administration in Niger.
In 1960, the nation formally proclaimed its independence from the French colonial power.
The voicemail was the most recent indication that Prigozhin and his men are still operating in Africa, where they are eager to grow and still have security contracts in some nations like the Central African Republic (CAR).
In spite of a contract with Putin that would have him transfer to Belarus, where some of his men have already begun training the army, Prigozhin, 62, appears to still retain freedom of movement.
In a video that was made public earlier this month, he was heard in Belarus instructing his soldiers to gather their strength for a “new journey to Africa.”
