‘It is like a virus that spreads’: business as usual for Wagner group’s extensive Africa network

The Russian regime is expected to appropriate and exploit the lucrative web of companies Yevgeny Prigozhin built, rather than shut it down, experts believe. Photograph: AP

Four days after Wagner group mercenaries marched on Moscow, a Russian envoy flew into Benghazi to meet a worried warlord. The message from the Kremlin to Khalifa Haftar, the self-styled general who runs much of eastern Libya, was reassuring: the more than 2,000 Wagner fighters, technicians, political operatives and administrators in the country would be staying.

“There will be no problem here. There may be some changes at the top but the mechanism will stay the same: the people on the ground, the money men in Dubai, the contacts, and the resources committed to Libya,” the envoy told Haftar in his fortified palatial residence. “Don’t worry, we aren’t going anywhere.”