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Documents Suggest Russian Contractor Key Figure For Kremlin In Africa

Jamie Dettmer

   A Russian military contractor indicted last year by U.S. special
   counsel Robert Mueller for meddling in domestic American politics is
   emerging as a key figure in a wide-ranging Kremlin influence operation
   aimed at boosting Russian clout in Africa at the expense of Western
   powers, according to documents obtained by an investigative unit funded
   by an exiled critic of Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

   Nicknamed "Putin's cook' because of his lucrative Kremlin catering
   contracts, the 57-year-old Yevgeny Prigozhin emerges from a tranche of
   documents as the go-to oligarch for Moscow's ambition to turn
   sub-Saharan Africa into a strategic hub and to reduce Western
   influence.

   The documents, first reported by Britain's Guardian newspaper, detail
   the activities and goals in various African countries of the Wagner
   group, a military contractor that supplied Russian mercenaries to
   Kremlin allies for combat in Syria and Ukraine. The St.
   Petersburg-based Prigozhin has denied in the past the existence of the
   Wagner group, but both were sanctioned by the U.S. Department of the
   Treasury in 2016 for supporting pro-Moscow separatists in the conflict
   in Ukraine's Donbas region.

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