Wagner Group activities in the Central African Republic
[4][5] There have been an estimated 1,000 Wagner mercenaries stationed in CAR since 2018, protecting the government of Faustin-Archange Touadéra against rebels amid the Central African Republic Civil War, and seeking to control and extract valuable natural resources.
[9] In late March, Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated five Russian soldiers and 170 "civilian instructors" had been sent to the CAR to train its servicemen.
[17] Several years later, a report to the UN Security Council regarding human rights violations in the CAR noted that the Russian PMCs established themselves in the country's major mining centers.
[21] According to Bellingcat's Christo Grozev, during his time in the CAR, Pikalov was "a kind of intermediary" between Yevgeny Prigozhin's private companies, the Russian Ministry of Defense and the Kremlin.
[27] Overall, according to information obtained by the Ukrainian SBU, 1,012 Wagner PMCs were airlifted on two Tupolev Tu-154 airliners between August and December 2018, to Sudan, the CAR and other African countries.
[32] One month later, on 25 January 2021, CAR forces, backed by Russian PMCs and Rwandan troops, attacked Boyali, killing 44 rebels who were plotting an assault on the capital.
[33] Subsequently, CAR forces, supported by the Russian contractors and Rwandan troops, captured a number of strategic towns throughout February 2021, including Bossembele, Bouar, Béloko and Bossangoa.
[34][35][36][37] During the fighting, the rebel Coalition of Patriots for Change (CPC) claimed its fighters killed several Wagner PMCs and captured one when they destroyed their truck near Bambari on 10 February.
[38] At the end of February, a Gazelle helicopter, reportedly belonging to the Wagner Group, crashed due to technical problems while on a mission to retrieve PMCs who were wounded while engaging rebels that ambushed a CAR military convoy.
[52] In addition, at the end of the month, Russian and Syrian PMCs of the Wagner Group attacked a rebel checkpoint at the entrance of a village 28 kilometers from Bria, killing three CPC fighters.
[54] At the end of March 2021, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) stated it received reports of mass executions, arbitrary detentions, torture, forced displacement of civilians, and attacks on humanitarian workers attributable to private military forces allied with the CAR military, including the Wagner Group, as well as to UN peacekeepers in some instances.
Local residents and rights groups also stated that in Boda, west of Bangui, the PMCs occupied two schools since February, blocking around 2,000 children from attending class.
[61] At the end of June 2021, The New York Times obtained a report given to the UN Security Council which detailed that the Russian PMCs, under the guise of unarmed military advisers, led government forces during the January–February counter-offensive.
The report also found that the rebels conducted forcible recruitment of child soldiers, attacks against peacekeepers, looting of aid groups and sexual assaults on women.
[19] At the end of October, United Nations experts urged the CAR government to cut ties with private military and security personnel, including the Wagner Group, accusing them of committing human rights abuses.
[62] By mid-November 2021, according to a report by the European External Action Service, most of the Central African Armed Forces deployed units were operating under direct command or supervision by Wagner Group PMCs, who took command of at least one EU-trained battalion (Bataillon d'Infanterie Territoriale 7), and the Wagner Group has established "a solid influence" on the CAR military's general staff and other government institutions.
[63] As of late December, the rebels switched from frontline fighting to "guerrilla" warfare, reportedly causing "a large number of wounded" among the Russian PMCs, according to an expert at France's Center for International Studies.
[67] Mid-January, between 30 and 70 civilians were reportedly killed, some by stray fire, during an operation by the CAR military and the Wagner Group near Bria against the UPC rebels.
[70] On 12 February, Wagner PMCs and government troops advanced into Ouadda, killing Damane Zakaria, leader of the Patriotic Rally for the Renewal of the Central African Republic (RPRC) armed group, and 20 of his men.
[78] Four days later, The Daily Beast cited CAR officials who alleged attacks and rapes by Wagner contractors at a Henri Izamo military camp hospital in Bangui on 10 April 2022.
[79] In late June, it was reported that since the start of the year Wagner PMCs conducted nine raids, including helicopter assaults, on mines in the lawless border areas between the CAR and Sudan, with three major attacks taking place on 13 March, 15 April and 24 May.
[80] In September 2022, The Daily Beast interviewed survivors and witnesses of yet another massacre committed by the Wagner Group in Bèzèrè village in December 2021, which involved torture, killing and disembowelment of a number of women, including pregnant ones.
[81] In mid-January 2023, the Wagner Group sustained relatively heavy casualties as a new government military offensive was launched near the CAR border with Cameroon and Chad.
[82] In February 2023, The Guardian reported that Wagner mercenaries sustained heavy casualties in clashes with rebels amid a push to take control of lucrative gold mines.
In the process, Wagner fighters invaded and "emptied" entire villages to carry out their logging activities at virtually no cost, creating a potential revenue of up to $890 million on international markets.
[86] On 30 July 2018, three Russian journalists (Kirill Radchenko, Alexander Rastorguyev [ru] and Orkhan Dzhemal [ru]) belonging to the Russian online news organisation Investigation Control Centre (TsUR), which is linked to Mikhail Khodorkovsky, were ambushed and killed by unknown assailants in the Central African Republic, three days after they had arrived in the country to investigate local Wagner activities.
[103] In January 2019, it was revealed that, according to evidence gathered by Khodorkovsky's Dossier Center (Russian: Центра «Досье»), a major in the Central African Gendarmerie was involved in the ambush.
