Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin has seemingly made an appearance in Africa where he has pledged to ‘make Russia even greater’.
A recruitment video shared on Monday showed the 62-year-old mercenary toting a gun in a military uniform and a sun hat.
He said the Wagner Group is conducting reconnaissance and search activities, and ‘making Russia even greater on all continents, and Africa even more free’.
‘We are hiring real strongmen and continuing to fulfil the tasks which were set and which we promised to handle,’ Prigozhin added.
The fighter said his men were ‘giving ISIS, al-Qaida and Al-Qaeda and other bandits hell’ – many countries in Africa face extremist attacks on civilians and military personnel.
He did not reveal where on the continent he was speaking from, but said temperatures were 50°C.
The Associated Press news agency was not able to officially verify the clip that appeared on the Razgruzka Vagnera telegram channel which has previously been linked to Wagner.
This is the first military recruitment video Prigozhin has published since his short-lived mutiny against Russian president Vladimir Putin, when he ordered his soldiers to march towards Moscow in June.
While the rebellion posed the most serious threat Putin’s 23-year rule has ever seen, it ultimately failed.
Last month, Prigozhin was believed to have welcomed his fighters to Belarus, where he was exiled after his attempted coup.
He reportedly said Wagner would take no further part in the Ukraine war for now and added that troops would ‘gather their strength in Belarus’ before ‘heading off for Africa’.
Many countries on the continent, especially in the Sahel region, have tried to move away from their partnerships with Western powers and have ended up turning to Russia.
In Mali, French forces which were deployed to tackle extremism have been replaced with fighters from Wagner. The group also has men stationed in Central African Republic (CAR).
There are concerns that Niger, which underwent a coup last month, is next on the increasing list of turning countries.
Its Western-backed leader, Mohamed Bazoum, was ousted by a group claiming to be ‘defence and security forces’ who had rebelled because of the ‘deteriorating security and bad economic and social governance’.
Prigozhin was reportedly quick to applaud the stunt, but also denied being behind it in a voice message posted on Telegram channels associated with him.
He said: ‘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.
‘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.’
