Wagner Mercenary Boss Prigozhin Offers Services To Niger Coup

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.

Prigozhin’s voice message on Wagner-related Telegram app channels did not claim involvement in the coup but portrayed it as a moment of long-overdue independence from Western colonisers.

“What happened in Niger is nothing other than the struggle of the people of Niger with their colonisers. With colonisers 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, July 28.

“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 colonisers,” the message said.

In what sounded like a sales pitch, Prigozhin boasted of Wagner’s supposed efficacy in assisting African nations to stabilize and prosper in his voice message.

“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.

As of press time, it was unknown who was in command of Niger after soldiers declared a military coup on Wednesday evening and imprisoned President Mohamed Bazoum in the presidential palace.

Then, two days later, Abdourahmane Tchiani, the chief of Niger’s presidential guard, declared himself the leader of a transitional government in Niger, just two days after his guards detained and deposed democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum.

In 1960, the country declared complete independence from its previous colonial overlord, France.

The voice message was the latest indication that Prigozhin and his men are still active in Africa, where they have security contracts in nations such as the Central African Republic (CAR) and are eager to expand.

Prigozhin, 62, appears to be moving freely despite a pact with Putin that would see him relocate to neighbouring Belarus, where some of his men have already begun training for the army.

In a video published earlier this month, he was seen encouraging his soldiers in Belarus to gather their strength for a “new journey to Africa.”