ADRIAN MA, HOST:
When it comes to Russia's military ambitions, most of the focus has been on its war with Ukraine. But there is a less-talked-about front in Vladimir Putin's military strategy taking place on a totally different continent, Africa. It's being carried out by a shadowy mercenary force known as the Wagner Group. And if that name rings a bell, you might remember, about a year ago, hearing about how the Wagner Group and its soldiers were hired to fight in Ukraine, but then staged a failed mutiny against Putin. And you might also remember that the Wagner Group's leader, a man named Yevgeny Prigozhin, died just weeks after that in a mysterious plane crash. Prigozhin's death, however, was not the end of the Wagner Group.
Our next guest, Sean McFate, explains why. He's a national security expert who teaches at the National Defense University, and he has called Wagner the world's most dangerous private army. Sean, thanks for joining us.
SEAN MCFATE: It's great to be back on.
MA: So before we dive in, can you just remind us, what is the Wagner Group, and why are they important?
MCFATE: The Wagner Group is or was a Russian mercenary outfit that was stood up in 2014 during the first invasion of Ukraine and has been used as a secret weapon of choice by the Kremlin in the Middle East and throughout Africa, and has recently played a major role in the Ukraine war today. But then things went south when they marched on Moscow in June of 2023.
MA: And you had just said they marched on Moscow. So can you just say a little more about that. Like, why did they do that? And how did that kind of change the situation?
MCFATE: The march on Moscow in June of last year was not so much a mutiny as it was a renegotiation. I mean, this has always been the case in private warfare. When a mercenary group and their master have a contract dispute, there's no court of law that they can go into, so typically, the mercenary marches on their master to renegotiate. And that's what happened. And when Prigozhin was marching up the road to Moscow, he was probably talking to Putin or Putin's representatives, renegotiating. And at the last minute, they pulled into Belarus, a neighboring country. And then Putin renegotiated the contract 60 days later, when he blew up Prigozhin's plane with all his lieutenants on board. And that changed - basically, Putin took over the Wagner Group for himself.
MA: And just to call attention here, you say flat out that Putin blew up Prigozhin's plane. And so it sounds like you're not saying that this was a mysterious plane accident.
MCFATE: Yes. We're confident that Putin blew up the plane. Some people think that the plane is empty and that Prigozhin's sitting someplace in the Caribbean on a yacht with a beard and a mai tai, but we just don't know. He's out of the picture. Basically, think of it as like a corporate takeover. When one company buys another company, they fire the C-suite, the leadership, which was the exploding plane. They changed some middle management and they read the employees the new corporate values, which happened in January this past year, when Russia says, you are now working for the Ministry of Defense. You're going to sign a contract of loyalty, and we're rebranding you the Africa Corps. And lastly, they just want to have the Wagner Group keep on doing what it's doing in Africa. And that's what they've been doing since the sort of renegotiations, the hostile takeover phase.
MA: Huh. OK. So under new management, are they still called the Wagner Group?
MCFATE: No. They rebranded. So they're called now the Africa Corps. But the idea, though, is that they are basically the secret hand of Russia operating across the Sahel of Africa to turn it into a brotherhood of juntas that don't face the West but faced Moscow as a client state. And so that's what Wagner Group has been doing since then. They their role in Ukraine is - you know, what's left of them are they were just cannon fodder. Those weren't even mercenaries. They were just, you know, guys dumped out of jails who are murderers and rapists. The actual skilled mercenaries were always in Africa because Prigozhin kept them there to look after his business interests. After he disappeared, they're still doing what they were doing before, but they're doing it under new management. That is Mr. Putin.
MA: I can't help but wonder whether what Wagner is doing currently, kind of at the behest of Vladimir Putin, is something that the U.S. should worry about or perhaps do something about.
MCFATE: The U.S. has missed some opportunities. The United States of America doesn't think - they don't think of mercenaries as a lethal force, and to us, they aren't. I mean, not - mercenaries are not going to take over the United States of America, right? But the problem when you miss an opportunity is that the mercenary army of Wagner and the Russian military had this ongoing friction between the two of them, which is, frankly, pretty typical in history between private and public warriors. And we should have exploited that to get the Russian and the wider groups to not trust or work with each other and to fight against each other, even. And that could have ended the war in Ukraine in 2023.
But we didn't do that because we don't think of mercenaries as a part of modern warfare. We think of them either as cheap Hollywood villains or something from antiquity. And more importantly, these mercenaries, they're not a direct threat to the United States, but they can become a problem in regions around the world that we care about, like the Middle East. So we need to keep a lookout about these mercenaries, and just because Prigozhin is assassinated doesn't make the problem go away.
MA: We've been speaking with Sean McFate, professor of international studies at the National Defense University. This is fascinating and kind of sobering, Sean. Thanks for joining us.
MCFATE: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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