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Russia’s growing role in the volatile Central African Republic was in the spotlight this week, after Moscow sent military instructors following a rebel threat to disrupt Sunday’s election.
Moscow has been carrying out a diplomatic and financial offensive in this deeply troubled country since 2018 in exchange for concessions granted to its companies to exploit the country’s mineral wealth, in particular gold and diamonds.
Russia has sent arms and openly supports incumbent President Faustin Archange Touadera who is on his way to winning a second term in legislative and presidential elections.
Touadera’s government recently signed a military cooperation agreement with Russia, while Moscow opened a military office in the country last year and sent four generals to oversee it.
Growing military presence
The mining concessions have been ceded to companies associated with Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is very close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Prigozhin is suspected of being the main funder of Russian private security company Wagner, whose men have been deployed across the country, according to experts, diplomats and non-governmental organizations.
At least 175 “military instructors” have been sent since 2018 to train the country’s soldiers and ensure Touadera’s security.
But a week ago, when three main rebel groups threatened to march on the capital Bangui in what the government called a coup attempt, Russia sent giant Antonov aircraft carriers loaded with at least 300 military instructors to assist the regular forces.
Moscow initially denied this but later admitted sending the troops.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said it was “gravely concerned that the events of recent days have led to a sharp deterioration in the security situation” in the CAR.
The actions of the three rebel groups had been “well coordinated and nurtured from the outside” and were aimed at “disrupting the electoral process”, he said.
Several witnesses and NGOs reported that the “instructors” were at the front to fight the rebels.
In mid-October, armored vehicles draped in the Russian and Central African flags patrolled the streets of Bangui.
The Russian instructors were housed in Berengo, about 60 kilometers (40 miles) from the capital of the former French colony.
“The Central African Republic is not of much interest to Russia,” said Roland Marchal, RCA expert at the prestigious Sciences Po in Paris.
“But it allows them to direct the French”, with whom they disagree, especially in Syria and Ukraine, he said.
The war of the “ trolls ”
A civil war erupted in March 2013 in CAR when predominantly Muslim rebels from a coalition called Séléka stormed the capital and expelled François Bozize, a Christian and former general who had seized power a decade earlier.
France has sent some 2,000 soldiers under UN mandate. In 2014, the UN sent its own mission, MINUSCA, and in 2016 elections were held, won by Touadera, a technocrat trained in France.
France has since redeployed its troops to fight jihadists in the Sahel region.
“Russia is offering a security package without financial debt – just concessions given to private conglomerates,” said Arnaud Kalika, a Russian expert formerly in the French military intelligence service.
In October, the American NGO The Sentry published a damning report denouncing “a violent proxy war between pro-French and pro-Russian actors looting the country’s natural resources”.
“Foreign powers interfere in domestic politics and sow conflict in a competition to strip the country of its treasure and gain a geostrategic advantage in this part of the continent,” he said.
Three Russian journalists investigating Wagner’s role in CAR were killed in July 2018. The investigation into their deaths has largely been abandoned.
Earlier this month, Facebook deleted more than 500 Facebook and Instagram accounts, pages and groups from Russia and France targeting 13 countries in Africa and the Middle East, including the CAR.
Facebook classified the foreign interference as coordinated inauthentic behavior on behalf of a foreign or government entity.
In CAR, disinformation groups linked to France and Russia have engaged “with each other, including befriending, commenting and criticizing the opposing party for its fake,” he said. he declares.
The groups had ties to Putin’s ally, Prigozhin, and the French military, he said.
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