but retreat can become a trap

The sarcastic and mocking image delivered by the leader of the group’s mercenaries Wagner, Prigozhin, to his favorite channel, Telegram, portrays a dog by the sea sipping a beer from a straw. Here, writes the former chef of Putinwarlord and self-styled conqueror of Bakhmutthe perfect portrait of a “Wagnerian” at the end of the battle, even if in reality the battle is not over and the Ukrainians are advancing on the flanks and according to the ISW, the Institute for the study of war, they are “encircling the troops of Wagner”.

MISSION HALF
Prigozhin knows very well that he cannot appear triumphant in front of the pits of thousands and thousands of his militiamen sent to slaughter for a handful of rubble. The Ukrainian generals had prophesied him a future as a rat in a trap, which cannot advance or even retreat: in front are the reorganized forces of Kiev, behind the “knife brothers” of the Russian Defense Ministry. And then, according to an analysis by Foreign Affairs, all that remains is for him to return to his “sickness for Africa”. At the job he did best: security operations (including personal ones) in a string of African states at risk of jihadist terrorism and internal revolution: from Mali to Burkina Faso, from Sudan to the Central African Republic, but also in Mozambique and Zimbabwe , and if not armed with Kalashnikovs, at least with computers and hackers to direct the vote in the elections. Always in an anti-European and anti-American key. Indeed, Prigozhin has been unscrupulous enough in recent months, when he already smelled a failed victory over Bakhmut, to address on several occasions directly, with public letters, the White House and propose to join forces for the “security and stability” of the continent. And adding an astute reference to humanitarian missions, he launched the “Wagner save Africa” ​​project. Of course, nothing is done for nothing. Much less Prigozhin, who gets “paid” by the Central African and Sahelian (see Sudan) heads of state and government with mining concessions and the exploitation of the rich gold deposits.

THE NEXT STEPS
Foreign Affairs writes that from the Sahel to the Horn of Africa and Maputo, what Wagner offers is a true “Faustian blackmail”. A piece of soul in exchange for security. ‘Wagner is doing a back somersault towards Africa?’ In fact, if in Ukraine Prigozhin has unleashed all his potential and now has little to offer, he is not in any case destined to “slip into obscurity”. And he could move his mercenary units from the Donbass to the Sahel, where many of his “hires” came from. In the words of the Telegraph columnist, Dominic Nicholls, one of the reasons why Prigozhin’s militiamen did not break through at Bakhmut but had to advance meter by meter over the bodies of their killed comrades, is that «they are used to using rifles in urban guerrilla warfare”, the type of war waged in Africa, while “in the Ukraine you have to know how to fight with tanks in the open field”.

For this reason, Wagner’s troops desperately needed effective cover on the flanks, which failed when their leader persisted in hurling invectives against the defense minister, Shoigu. The Institute for the study of war argues that the mercenaries had already realized that they were at the height of their action at the end of December. “And now they are unlikely to continue fighting beyond Bakhmut in the degraded state of forces in which they find themselves.” No more attack operations. It’s time to get on the defensive, a war that is not for mercenaries forged by aggressive hand-to-hand combat in Africa. The American decision to include the Wagner organization among the international criminal organizations should lead to a return of the West to Africa, where not only Prigozhin has pursued and consolidated Moscow’s interests (his own and those of Putin, both sensitive to gold ), but it replaced the order solution represented until a few years ago by the French legionnaires. Thus the Ukrainian risk extends its tentacles from the Black Sea to the Gulf of Aden. Prigozhin’s ambition has no limits or boundaries, it even reaches America aiming at Haiti. The Ukrainian scenario has turned out to be a death trap, the fight for the Kremlin a mirage. The horror multinational, “the orchestra” as they like to call themselves, is holed up in the places of “first love”. Africa.

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