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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| After Prigozhin's Death, a High-Stakes Scramble for His Empire |
| 2023-09-09 |
| [NYT] A shadowy fight is playing out on three continents for control of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s sprawling interests as head of the Wagner mercenary group. The biggest prize: His lucrative operations in Africa. African leaders allied with Russia had grown used to dealing with Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the swaggering, profane mercenary leader who traveled the continent by private jet, offering to prop up shaky regimes with guns and propaganda in return for gold and diamonds. But the Russian delegation that toured three African countries last week was led by a very different figure, the starchy deputy defense minister Yunus-bek Yevkurov. Dressed in a khaki uniform and a "telnyashka" — the horizontally-striped undergarment of Russian armed forces — he signaled conformity and restraint, giving assurances wrapped in polite language. "We will do our best to help you," he said at a news conference in Burkina Faso. The contrast with the flamboyant Mr. Prigozhin could not have been sharper, and it aligned with the message the Kremlin was delivering: After Mr. Prigozhin’s death in a plane crash last month, Russia’s operations in Africa were coming under new management. Western officials briefed on confidential intelligence assessments say two Russian spy agencies — the foreign intelligence service, the S.V.R., and the military intelligence agency, the G.R.U. — are vying to take over key aspects of Mr. Prigozhin’s operations. Two officials, from different governments, said that the S.V.R. was likely to absorb Wagner’s propaganda and online disinformation outlets targeting foreign countries, while the Defense Ministry and the G.R.U. could take in Wagner’s mercenary operation. |
| Posted by:Enver Slager8035 |